


The Mindless Murder

by theatricalmess



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom, Potterlock - Fandom, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Potterlock, Sherlolly - Freeform, To be cross-posted on Wattpad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 36
Words: 57,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24134833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theatricalmess/pseuds/theatricalmess
Summary: Avalon Foster is the Head Auror working for the Ministry of Magic, working closely with Minister Mycroft Holmes. A series of murders has the entire department of Aurors in confusion. They are working with the worst of everything, working to exhaustion as the Wizard world demands answers.Answers are far away—very far away—and it seems as though Head Auror Foster is going to lose her position.When two Hogwarts students are found dead on the Quidditch field, killed the same way as the other victims Foster has been investigating, the case starts to become dire. With students terrified for their lives, Avalon employs the help of the only person who truly can help her—the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Sherlock Holmes.Between the two of them, can they solve the case that even Mycroft Holmes can't quite grasp before time runs out?"Tick, tick, tick Miss Foster. Time's a-runnin' out—save him before it's too late.""What happens when it's too late?""Boom."Three chapters a day are planned but it may not always work out that way, especially with other works in progress.
Relationships: Sherlock x oc, sherlolly
Kudos: 10





	1. Avalon Foster

**Author's Note:**

> Please excuse the cluelessness of an American trying to make a feeble attempt to write with British words.

“Two more bodies were found this morning.”  
The laundry basket I had been holding slipped from my grasp, dumping the formerly folded clothes within. _“Two?”_  
“Yes, in Muggle territory. Donovan had Anderson take a look at the bodies—”  
_“Anderson?!”_  
“Yes, Anderson. I am well-aware of your dislike of him, but with you in America letting MACUSA know what has happened, we had no choice but to turn to Donovan and Anderson. How did that go, by the way, with MACUSA?”  
“They’ve agreed to help if the murders become international, but as long as it stays in Britain, they’re keeping their noses in their own territory.”  
There was a sigh from the other end of the line. “No surprise there, I suppose, but a disappointment nonetheless.”  
“I thought you weren’t one for hope and emotions and sentiment and all those ‘nasty things’ as you call them.”  
The Minister of Magic sighed through his nose. “Ah, well. With you across the pond, I was the one who had to inform the families of the dead they wouldn’t be seeing their family members again.”  
“Oh, dear, that must’ve been terrible for you— _legwork!”_  
“Ha ha, very funny.” The Minister’s voice had gone very dull.  
“Tell me about the murders,” I insisted.  
“Anderson’s drawn up a report and Donovan will be filling you in on the details—”  
“I need an unbiased report,” I interrupted. “You, with all your lack of emotion, are the only person who can give that to me. Donovan and Anderson unconsciously assign their biases in their reports, it’s one of the reasons I hate working with them.”  
“Your pickiness is what makes me question how you managed to become Head Auror.”  
“I’m the best you’ve got,” I said baldly. “To fire me would end in catastrophe. Now—report.”  
“The victims are both young but seem to have no connection to each other. One is a male in his twenties, the other a female just a few years older. Each were killed within an hour of the other, the woman killed first. Katie Smith was her name—she was an Arithmancer. The man was known by the name of Tom Leesion. He was an investigator for the Beast Division of the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.”  
“When can I come to look at the bodies?”  
“Today, if you don’t mind. That’s why I called you. This is getting out of hand. If the murderer isn’t caught, I’m going to have the entire community hounding me for answers and begging for my resignation.”  
“Oh, calm yourself, I’ll be there within the hour.” I stood from my sofa and persuaded my tired body that was still trying to catch up with the time difference to pull on more suitable clothes for work.  
“Good” was the Minister’s last word before he ended the call.  
Sighing, I pulled on my trench coat and newsboy cap, throwing on boots that went to my knees. I stuffed my wand unceremoniously into my pocket and tossed my phone into the pocket after it. Stretching briefly, my bones cracked and my body sighed with relief.  
I started on the walk to the bathroom entrance to the Ministry. Normally I would have just Apparated into work for a situation as dire as this, but I had only just returned to the country. I would have to be checked over before I could be allowed into my own office.  
Going through customs took far longer than I anticipated, so I sent a text ahead to the Minister, earning strange looks from pureblood wizards around me.  
I spent so much time with my mostly half-blood Aurors or out in the Muggle world that I had forgotten phones were a rare thing in my world. I wondered if half of these wizards knew their Minister was also a half-blood who preferred Muggle technology over magic on occasion.  
I found Minister Holmes waiting for me in my office when I arrived, Auror Donovan beside him. There was no sign of Anderson, the squib that former Head Auror Lestrade had insisted I keep around before Lestrade had gone off to teach at Hogwarts.  
“Morning, Minister,” I said, nodding to him. “Sally.”  
Both bowed their heads in recognition and it was Donovan that stepped forward, tossing me a wad of pictures clipped together with a paper clip. “The victims found this morning.”  
“Found by wizard or Muggle?”  
“Muggle. He’s been obliviated,” she promised.  
“Good.” I flicked through the pictures. “Sloppier than last time, no? Or is it just more bloody?”  
“We assumed more bloody when the bodies were first found, but after Anderson cleared the blood away we found otherwise. We didn’t take pictures, but you’ll be able to see the bodies for yourself.”  
“Describe them to me?”  
We started on our way down the mortuary, the Minister falling into step beside me, Donovan on the other side. “Deeper wounds, no clear pattern. They zigzag aimlessly and both bodies are covered in them—the man more so than the woman.”  
“Any suspicions?” I glanced at the Minister. “That is why you’re on the case, too, isn’t it? My Aurors can’t figure it out, they call in you?”  
“My brother would be a better alternative,” the Minister said through gritted teeth, “but that’s not an option with the school year only a few months in. But yes.”  
“Any ideas? Reasons, motives, anything?” I had a few suspicions myself, but I had enough experience to let Mycroft Holmes have his say.  
“I’m guessing the male may have either been someone the murderer knows or that the man antagonized his murderer before his death.”  
I took this information with a crisp nod. “Suspects?”  
“None,” Donovan sighed. “It’s still unclear if a wizard is behind these attacks or if it’s a Muggle who has discovered magic and gone on a rampage like the Second Salemers in New York or that case we had two years ago.”  
Both thoughts of the case and the Second Salemers were not thoughts I liked. Muggles who discovered magic on accident and then decided they needed to rid the world of it were dangerous—most spells to keep magic hidden stopped working on them and they saw it everywhere. It was in times likes those that the magical community was most in danger.  
“Well if it’s a Muggle, we’d better get a move on,” I grumbled irritably.  
We entered the mortuary. Both bodies lay in the open, Anderson studying them and muttering to himself as he scratched out a few notes onto the notepad he was holding.  
“Anderson,” I said by way of greeting, “anything important?”  
“These wounds are much different from the singular strikes we saw on the other five bodies,” he started, glancing up from his notes. “Normally there’s the usual strike to the jugular, that slice across the neck—but these two were both killed in a different fashion: both were stabbed directly through the heart. A precise cut, but I can’t be sure if it was made before or after the rest of the wounds were.”  
“Magic will help with that,” Mycroft said airily.  
Anderson flinched and despite my complete dislike for the man, I cast the Minister a glare. It would do me no good if the Minister ticked off my only forensic at the moment over his being a squib.  
“I’ll take a look at the bodies, if you don’t mind,” I said, drawing Anderson’s attention back to myself. He nodded meekly and made to pass me a lens before realizing I had magic to deal with that as I pulled my wand from my pocket.  
I shrugged off my trench coat and laid it across a chair. Stalking to Tom Leesion’s body, I lifted my wand, not needing to speak the spell aloud as I examined the wounds. Calmly, I set my magic to work trying to decipher when each strike had been made and waited.  
“If only Miss Hooper were here, she did quite well, didn’t she?” Mycroft mused to my forensic scientist, seemingly dying to anger Anderson a bit more.  
“Molly left to work at Hogwarts with Lestrade,” Anderson replied stiffly. “Said she wanted to help those kids.”  
“A good choice of hers, too, I hear she’s doing quite well as Madam Pomfrey’s assistant,” I added before rushing on, “Donovan, would you mind coming here for a moment?”  
“Of course, Foster,” she agreed. “What do I—?”  
I handed her the looking glass Anderson had left on the table. “Hold that for a moment, right above the throat. Tell me what you see.”  
Squinting, she examined the area I’d pointed to. “There...there appears to be...fingerprints of some sort?”  
“Ah, yes, but not exactly fingerprints. Marks made and left by fingers, indeed, but there are no prints to match it with. In other words, our murderer must be magic to completely have been able to wipe their prints from the throat, even if the indents and bruises remained slightly. However…” I gave Katie Smith a quick examination of the same area. “Smith’s body is devoid of such markings.” Going back to Leesion, I finished my examination: “The marks about his throat were made before the stab to the heart. He was strangled to death, stabbed in the heart later. The other wounds were made before both the stab to the heart and strangulation were committed. Clearly, our murderer wanted this man to suffer.” I moved to Smith’s body. “Katie Smith, let’s see…” I performed the same spell and a few moments later said: “The stab to her heart was performed before her body was mutilated and sliced up. I believe your examinations proved she was killed before Leesion?”  
Anderson nodded in confirmation.  
“Brilliant; so, Smith was killed first. The murderer ran into Leesion—I’m going to assume, Mycroft, that your guess that the murderer and Leesion were familiar with each other—and wanted Leesion to suffer, so he or she wounded him first, strangled him, and then stabbed him in the heart to make the murder appear similar to Smith’s, hoping the strangulation would go unnoticed after using magic to dim the bruises and wipe away his or her fingerprints.”  
“Our murderer is a he,” Mycroft said suddenly as he examined the bodies beside me.  
“How can you tell?” Donovan demanded.  
Anderson shot her a look. “After all this time, you’d think you have learned to not ask that question.”  
“Minister,” I said, shooting the Minister a look before he could open his mouth to show off his intelligence. “So that’s that. Leesion worked for us, correct?—Yes. Go through all his information, see if we can search through people he knows and narrow the list down a bit, eh? I want my best and brightest on this.” I nodded to both Anderson and Donovan, the latter already on her way out the door, scrambling to follow my orders. “Anderson, watch those bruises. Update me if the magic wears off. Minister, good day.” I inclined my head to Mycroft Holmes and swept my coat back over my shoulders, slipping my wand back into my pocket.  
I Apparated out of my office only ten minutes after I got there and headed to St. Mungo’s to visit my brother.


	2. John Watson

Former Auror Greg Lestrade had been keeping a close eye on the newest mystery the Aurors were dealing with at the Ministry and I had been “lucky” enough to be on the receiving end of his mutterings.   
Normally, Greg was very pleased with the work the new Head Auror did—a young woman he’d trained and taught himself, taking her under his wing upon seeing her talent. But as the case dragged on and the murders kept appearing, he was beginning to criticize her movements much more harshly.  
Greg wasn’t the only one who was watching the case closely—my flatmate during the summer, coworker during the fall, winter, and spring, and best friend year-round Sherlock Holmes was also incredibly invested in the case.  
The two of them were nearly insufferable, reading the _Daily Prophet_ together to glean as much information as they could about the murders. Sherlock often spent his time grumbling about how they were too vague with the details of the case, while Greg’s complaints were often more personal and about how he was disappointed the Head Auror wasn’t getting the case solved fast enough.  
“Perhaps you could talk to her about it?” I suggested one morning as students filed into the Great Hall for breakfast. The three of us—plus Moriarty, Minerva, Hagrid, Molly, and my wife Mary—were observing the chaos from our table.  
We were all professors at Hogwarts. I taught both flying and Astronomy, often refereeing Quidditch matches. Minerva was our Headmaster. Greg had taken her place as a Transfiguration teacher. Sherlock taught Defense Against the Dark Arts, Moriarty taught Potions, Mary taught Charms, Hagrid remained our gamekeeper, and Molly was being trained to take over after Madam Pomfrey retired. Neville Longbottom and Sybill Trelawney were two other teachers—amongst the rest—who had not shown up in the Great Hall for breakfast that morning.  
Greg snorted in response. “That’s the problem—Avalon doesn’t like other people telling her what to do.”  
I glanced at Sherlock, who was absorbed in the _Daily Prophet_ —no doubt reading about the case again. “Sounds like someone I know.”  
“Hmm, yes, I can hear you,” Sherlock said without looking up. “There’s been two more bodies discovered.”  
_“What?”_ Greg nearly choked on his bacon.  
Sherlock passed him his copy of the paper. “Found this morning by a Muggle.”  
Greg’s eyes scanned the paper. “Outrageous! John, I suppose you’re right—I really must have a word with Avalon about this!”  
“I’d join you in having that word,” Sherlock grumbled irritably. “This case should have been solved already! I would have at least had a lead in ten minutes; it’s been ten _weeks_ and they’ve still got nothing but more bodies.”  
“Actually, they do have a lead,” I interjected, pointing to a section on the next page. “It says here: _Just this morning before papers were printed, Head Auror Avalon Foster made the discovery the murderer had a personal connection with one of his victims and used magic to eliminate his fingerprints from the body where the victim—whose name will not be released at this time—had been strangled. Foster has put forensics on the job of bringing these fingerprints back to light.”_  
Greg squawked. _“Forensics?!”_ he squeaked.  
Molly frowned and leaned across the table to be seen by us. “Isn’t only Anderson on forensics now that I’ve left?”  
Greg nodded. “What the heck is she _doing_ , putting a Squib on a task that requires strenuous magic?!”  
“Losing her mind,” Sherlock suggested, throwing the _Prophet_ down in disgust.  
Molly hesitated. “I wouldn’t say that—Greg, Avalon always knew what she was doing when we were there, I’m sure she has a reason for putting Anderson on the job.”  
“Anderson’s the only forensic left, you said, right?” I asked. When they nodded I continued, “So if he’s the only one left, he’s the only thing she’s got. She’s making do with what she has.”  
“Yes, but,” Greg sighed, “she always knew what she was doing because she was following the orders the Minister and myself gave her.”  
“It was because she was good at her job that you elected she take your place!” Molly cried, annoyance written clear as day across her face.  
I cleared my throat as Moriarty took notice of our conversation. “Guys, quiet down.”  
They shut themselves up real fast, each suddenly very interested in their food or the paper. From his robe pocket, Sherlock produced a small book. Glancing at the title, I raised both eyebrows.  
_“A Tale of Two Cities._ I didn’t know you were one for Dickens.”  
“I’m generally not,” Sherlock replied as he flicked the book open, “I prefer Poe.”  
I snorted, a slight chuckle coming from me.  
“That shouldn’t surprise you,” he remarked.  
“Oh, believe me, it doesn’t.” I kept the half-smile on my face, even as Sherlock frowned at me, clearly trying to gather what I was laughing about.  
“Hmm.” Sherlock pursed his lips together and returned to his book.

When lunch rolled around, Greg was not alone when he entered the Great Hall. Beside him was a young woman—she looked about Molly’s age—with hair like a firestorm, a mix of bronze and red and gold and orange tucked under a newsboy cap. She wore a flowy dark blue blouse, tight leather pants, a trench coat she had left open, and knee-high boots that weren’t heeled—but still, she was taller than most, perhaps an inch or two taller than Greg, even. A long gold necklace dangled to just above her navel, its pendant a symbol I couldn’t make out from the distance.  
As they approached our table, the students in the Great Hall turned to gape at the Auror, who cut a magnificently striking figure.  
_“That’s_ Avalon Foster?” I hissed to Molly and Mary, both of whom were staring at the woman, Mary with a scrutinizing eye and Molly brimming with happiness.  
“You wouldn’t know her hair was that bright from the papers,” Mary muttered, eyeing Foster’s hair enviously.  
“We were all in for quite a shock the first time we met her,” Molly added. “We’d seen her picture but the hair was a surprise. It’s no surprise her Animagus is a phoenix.”  
“Really?” I turned to Molly in surprise. “An Animagus? Registered?”  
“Of course she’s registered, she works for the Ministry,” Mary chided. “Don’t be daft, John.”  
“I’m not—”  
“Sir, I can promise you we’re doing everything we can to solve it, but with Anderson as my only forensic—”  
“Don’t _sir_ me, you don’t respond to me anymore,” Greg chided. “I’m just Greg now.”  
“It’s just habit, s— Greg.” Her eyes turned to them and I straightened. Not only did her voice had an air of authority, a tone that commanded respect, her eyes seemed to carry that same authoritative aura that made me check my posture before realizing I didn’t defer to her.  
“Avalon, these are my coworkers: John Watson, he teaches flying and Astronomy and referees Quidditch matches; Jim Moriarty, our Potions master; Mary Watson, John’s wife and Charms professor; Hagrid, our gamekeeper as you already know; Minerva, who also already know, is our Headmistress; and Sherlock Holmes, our Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.”  
The Head Auror’s eyes narrowed twice—the first being at Moriarty (no surprise there, Greg had told us she’d been the one who caught him and made him pay for his crimes before he was partially obliviated and given a second chance) and the second at Sherlock. “Pleasure. And the other teachers?”  
“Neville is on his way,” Molly said, standing. She hurried to Foster and squeezed her tightly. “How have you been?”  
“I’m working my tail off trying to solve this case,” Foster groaned. “I haven’t slept in six days and my body’s still catching up on jet lag.” She glared harshly at Greg. “Mycroft sent me to MACUSA _four times_ this week.”  
“Has MACUSA agreed to send over any Aurors to assist?”  
“Not even close. I’ve been begging particularly for someone to go on forensics, but most of their wizards are refusing to work with a Squib. And, of course, the whole wizarding community is aware of Anderson now.”  
Greg winced.  
“I’m so sorry, Avalon, if I’d stayed—” Molly began, fretfully wringing her hands. “Should I come back?”  
Foster put a hand on Molly’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, Molly. You have a duty to these kids. They’re your job now, this is mine.” Foster frowned. “I’m sure I can figure out a way to handle Anderson. But with the Minister constantly antagonizing him about his lack of magic and the Kwikspell joke he pulled on him last Christmas it’s not getting any easier to cure Anderson of his unease over not having magic.”  
Greg blanched. “Mycroft? _Teasing?”_  
From beside me, Sherlock choked on his drink. “Mycroft did what now?!”  
Foster’s eyes flicked to him. She offered her hand. “Professor Holmes. I’m Head Auror Avalon Foster, I work with and for your older brother. Pleasure to meet you.”  
Sherlock cocked his head, something like surprise on his face. “Is it?”  
A smile graced Foster’s lips. She looked very nice when she smiled, a far cry from the stern face that demanded respect we’d seen so far and in the papers. “I see you are exactly as Mycroft describes you. He speaks often of you.” She offered him her hand, which he took after a moment of hesitation, giving her a brief but firm shake.  
“Does he now?”  
“Not fondly, I might add, but often. I am the one he complains to most often. I’ve heard about a great many of your stunts.” She chuckled lightly. “Your antics have given me much entertainment in my years as an Auror.”  
For once, Sherlock didn’t seem to know what to say. “Er, you’re welcome, I suppose.”  
Greg cleared his throat. “Avalon, these murders—”  
“As I’ve said, I’m doing the best I can. I’m making do with what I have—Donovan, Anderson, and the Minister himself are all I have left in the office. The rest of my Aurors are scattered across the country searching. If you want faster results, come back and get them yourself.” There was a note of unmistakable fury in Foster’s voice.  
Greg swallowed hard. “You know I can’t come back, just like that. I have students to teach and it would take forever to get the transfer back to the Ministry through and Mycroft’ll have my head if I slunk back now—”  
“Then stay out of my damn business and _stay out of my case, Lestrade!”_ Foster took a deep, steadying breath, ignoring the stares of the students that had swiveled in their seats to look at her. She nodded to each of us. “Lovely meeting you all, but now I must get back to work.” She gave Molly another squeeze. “I’ll talk to you soon. Oh, and, Minerva?”  
The Headmistress turned her attention to the Head Auror. “Yes, dear?”  
“Please give the Headmasters my love, won’t you?”  
Minerva smiled. “Of course, dear.”  
Foster barely looked at Greg. “I’ll solve this as soon as I can. Now if you excuse me.” She clicked her fingers and fire as brightly colored as her hair consumed her. (Only Molly and Greg did not seem surprised by this.) When the fire evaporated, all that remained was a phoenix, which soared out of the windows and out of sight.  
“And she’s still a drama queen,” Greg sighed as he watched her go. He glanced at the rest of us. “So what did you think of her?”  
“How is her hair that red? _How?”_ Mary demanded. I chuckled.  
“She seems alright,” I said, “though a bit annoyed if you ask me.”  
“That’s because I was pestering her about the case for about an hour before we got to lunch,” Greg admitted. “She impressed my students for quite a while before that, though, so she was in a good mood before I started. If she hadn’t been, I might have been singed by the time we got here, her temper is that scary.” He shuddered.  
“I like her,” Sherlock said, his mouth twitching.  
Our mouths hanging open, we all stared at Sherlock. In near unison, we all said, “You what?”  
Sherlock shrugged. “What? I like her.” Without another word, he flicked up his paper and hummed softly to himself as he continued reading through it.


	3. Avalon Foster

Wind pushed up against my wings, ruffling my feathers and pushing me up higher and higher into the sky.  
How long had it been since I’d flown? Though it had only been a couple of months, it seemed like it had been forever. Ever since my brother’s accident, I’d been grounded—first out of shock, then out of fear from the Ministry I would do something stupid, and now from this blasted case.  
I should have known my former boss would have been so critical. When I’d received his letter via my owl, a Barn owl by the name of Mimsy, I’d first assumed Mycroft had sent word about what happened to my brother before I realized he had already known—there was a sympathy card from him right by my brother’s bed.  
Lestrade had always been a man with high standards. Usually, I met those standards. But it ticked me off that he thought he could tell me how to do my job. Yes, he may have done it himself for years, but I had been with him for a majority of those years. I knew just as well as anyone else who’d had the position before me how to be an Auror—and a Head Auror, no less.  
Letting out a cry of both frustration and pleasure to be in the air, I swooped and looped around, enjoying my time in the sky. As I neared London, I swooped low and transformed back into myself. Fixing my cap just slightly, I Apparated into my flat and then started on the long walk to the Ministry.

The moment I got back to the Ministry, Mycroft shooed me out again, warning me to keep my face covered. In addition to the article the _Daily Prophet_ had published about the two newest victims, word had spread that Anderson was the only one on forensics—in response, the Wizarding world had exploded in outrage. It was doing them no good if a Squib was left to the job, they claimed.  
I couldn’t say I disagreed with them. That was why I had been begging MACUSA for help—we desperately needed some wizards on forensics to help Anderson out.  
After the Minister kicked me out, I found myself alone in my flat. The silence was nearly deafening.  
Silence. I’d always hated it. I had learned to equate silence with loneliness over the years, and it was awful without my brother or our other flatmate, both of whom were absent.  
The crash that had left my brother with nearly all his ribs broken, his collar bone broken, a concussion, and in a coma had happened just outside the flat. It had been silent before that, too. So now I had another thing to be tense about in the silent moments of the day—especially when it was silent in my flat.  
My flatmate was my brother’s girlfriend, Natalie. She was a pureblood wizard who had moved into our flat after her family kicked her out for dating a half-blood wizard (she was of the Lestranges). But after the crash, she and I both spent the majority of our time at St. Mungo’s; Natalie practically lived there, even sleeping in that horribly uncomfortable plastic chair most nights.  
The silence was filled, quite horribly, with the sound of Mycroft’s voice, accompanied by his dire expression, saying, _“If this case isn’t solved soon, the people might start calling for your resignation.”_  
“I’ll give them something to sate themselves for the time being,” I reasoned, talking aloud to banish the silence of my flat. “I’ll write up a report about the new bodies in detail and I’ll get the _Prophet_ to publish it.” I tapped my finger against my collarbone, a nervous habit I’d picked up over the years working for Lestrade. “But how to help Anderson…?”  
Normally, I wouldn’t care so much about Anderson. He was an idiot, that was for sure, but being raked through the mud like this—everybody knowing your name, knowing you were a Squib… I wouldn’t allow that in my office. I couldn’t let him suffer in shame and silence.  
Thinking deeply, I retreated to my desk, where I started to write and think simultaneously. Snapping my fingers in sudden inspiration, I started to write in Anderson’s name, giving him credit for several of the findings, for discovering the difference of the wounds, writing, _“For what Anderson lacks in his magical abilities, he has made up for it—by far—in this case with his observations and work on the bodies, particularly those of the two newest victims, Tom Leesion and Katie Smith.”_ I then went on to describe what Donovan had informed me he’d discovered.  
By the time I was finished, I was starting to smile. Knowing I had no time to lose—every second that passed before this was published and in the hands of the populace was more time for Anderson and I to both lose our jobs—I shot out of my seat, snatched up the papers I’d written my article on, threw on my coat, grabbed my wand, and Apparated directly into the Minister’s office.  
Mycroft jumped so violently his tea spilled from the cup he was holding. Sighing dismally as he stared at it, he put the cup back on his desk and wiped the spilled tea droplets off his waistcoat and pants. He finally looked up. “I thought I told you—?”  
“I have the answer.”  
Both eyebrows went up. “To the case?”  
“No, though that would be better. I have the answer to saving my job, Anderson’s, and how to placate the people for a time, until we have more information.” I threw the article on his desk. “Read it, tell me what you think.”  
The clock on the wall ticked away as the Minister read through the piece. As time ticked away, my patience wore thin. Mycroft had yet to give a reaction to my article. But when he handed it back to me, his expression was determined.  
“Print it,” he ordered. Then he wrote up a note of some sort and continued, “Give this to the people at the printing press. If they argue about adding your article or publishing it under a different name, shove this at them. It’ll guarantee they publish how you want them to.”  
I grinned a roguish grin that had always gotten me in trouble when I was in school. Snatching my article back up from Mycroft’s desk and taking the pass, I walked quickly through the halls of the Ministry.   
People normally cleared the way for me on a regular basis—I was told I commanded a sense of authority most people scurried away from—but now they practically ran to get out of my way and stared after me. I supposed I must have looked either lunatic or terrifying, but looking in the glass of an office door, I discovered my shoulders were thrown back, my walk purposeful, my head held high. I looked, if I were to say so myself, a bit like the Minister did walking these halls.  
When I reached the publishers of the _Daily Prophet, I handed them my article. “I need these printed for the evening edition of the Prophet.”_  
The man I was speaking to swallowed harshly. “H-head Auror F-Foster,” he stammered and I bit back the urge to roll my eyes. “I’m afraid we can’t publish the article, our paper’s full for the evening.”  
I waved Mycroft’s note under his nose. “Oh, I’m afraid you can.” I smirked as his eyes scanned the note, growing wider with every word. “Minister’s orders.”  
“Y-yes, of course, Head Auror, just this way,” he said, scurrying along at a fast pace, seeming to want as much distance between the two of us as possible. “Ally! Ally, come here, won’t you? We need this printed in tonight’s edition, _Minister’s orders.”_  
“What is it?” a woman I presumed to be Ally demanded.  
“An article of Head Auror Foster’s,” the man continued, glancing back at me. “It’s about that case.”  
Ally took my article. “We’ll have to print it under a different name, Aurors don’t write for the _Prophet—”_  
“Special occasion,” I interrupted as the man lifted a trembling hand to stop Ally. I passed her the same note I’d shown the man. “Straight from the Minister’s desk.”  
Ally read the note, nodded, and looked up at me. “Your article will be on the front page.” She smiled at me after reading a few paragraphs. “Above the fold.”  
“I’m honored,” I replied. “Now I really must get back to the case—”  
“Please do,” Ally said with a nod. “I’m sure the whole of the Ministry will be glad when it’s over.”  
After giving Ally a tight-lipped smile, I stalked from the publishers, stopped at Mycroft’s office to inform him of what had happened, then went down to forensics as I got a text from Anderson—the bruises were reappearing, but were fading fast. If we wanted to take fingerprints, we were going to have to do it now.  
It wasn’t the best of circumstances, but by Merlin, we were getting somewhere.


	4. Greg Lestrade

“Geoffrey!” When Sherlock popped his head into my office that evening, there was excitement in his voice and a grin on his face. Curiosity of why was enough to keep me from correcting him about my name again. “Foster’s written an article on the case _herself!”_ He held up a copy of the evening edition.  
“What?” Shock rippled through me. “But Aurors don’t write our own reports for the _Prophet!”_  
“But she has!” he assured me, hurrying across my office and dropping the paper on the desk. He pointed to the article on the front page, starting above the fold. “Look! It’s really quite an amazing piece—detailed, every ounce of the case explained to the t!”  
I picked up the paper and began to read. I was about halfway through when I shouted, “Molly! John! _Come quickly!”_  
Molly’s office was next to mine and John’s was across the hall. They both burst into the room at record speed.  
“Molly, look at this! _Avalon_ is defending _Anderson!”_  
In shock, Molly choked. “She did _what?”_  
“Crazy, isn’t it? Here, come look!” I read aloud as they crowded in around me, _“Forensics has proved several of our suspicions and theories correctly, along with the help of Minister Holmes. For what Anderson lacks in his magical abilities, he has made up for it—by far—in this case with his observations and work on the bodies, particularly those of the two newest victims, Tom Leesion and Katie Smith. In our study of the victims early this morning and the watch throughout today, Anderson made the discovery that bruises in the shape of fingers were made around Leesion’s neck. Further investigation into the matter by myself, Anderson, and Sally Donovan made it clear that fingerprints were missing from these bruises. Throughout today, Anderson has been watching the bruises as they reappear—previously hidden by magic quickly wearing off—and has been performing experiments to bring up formerly hidden fingerprints. Though no new discoveries have been made at this time, the public will be made aware of them the moment they come to light.”_ Scanning further down, I said, “She continues on, too! By Merlin, just how long is this thing?!”  
“It’s very detailed, too,” Sherlock added, plucking the paper from my hands. “Give me a few hours, I might be able to solve it.”  
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Molly interjected, stealing the paper and holding it out so both she and John could read it. “You give Avalon her glory, alright? She’ll solve it, I know she will.” Molly beamed at me. “Magnificent, isn’t it? You’d never know she wants to throttle Anderson half the time.”  
I chuckled. “Not at all, not at _all!_ It appears as though they’ll have this case solved in no time.”  
“Just this morning you were singing quite a different tune,” John remarked. “Is what’s in this article so life-changing?”  
“She’s letting people know what’s going on,” Sherlock explained. “Down at the end, she’s even got information on how to protect yourself. Of course, that might make it harder to capture the murderer—he might just quiet down after the article gets around—but the people will be comforted knowing she’s doing _something_ to stop these murders.”  
John nodded. “Ah.”   
“Pray the world calms down once this is out,” Molly added. “If everybody keeps hounding on her, I think Avalon might flip.”  
“Maybe she’ll follow our lead and come teach here. When she showed up earlier during my first year Transfiguration class, she amused the kids with far more advanced magic,” I said. “I think she’d make a lovely teacher.”  
Molly gave me a look. “But with how much she needs to constantly be doing something, is that safe? Wouldn’t you be afraid she’d...oh, I dunno, burn the school down on accident because she needed something to do with her life? Or maybe kill Moriarty.”  
“What’s the story with her and Moriarty?” John asked. “I know she caught him and made him pay for his crimes, but…”  
“She was livid when he was obliviated and released. Moriarty killed her parents. She fought with the Minister for weeks in attempts to have him sent to Azkaban, but she lost the debate. He was obliviated and given the chance to work in Hogwarts as Potions master. She refused to talk to Mycroft for a week. That was bad for Mycroft because she was filling in for his secretary for the next two weeks.”  
Sherlock snorted. “I remember him telling me about that. He was furious,” he remarked airily before flipping the page of the _Daily Prophet_ and humming softly as he scanned the rest of the article a second time. “She’s quite the eloquent writer, isn’t she?”  
I frowned. “I, uh, never noticed if she was or not. She just seemed...devoted to her work. She would write up a report as fast as she could so she could get on solving crime and making the world right. At least, that’s what her brother said of her: she wanted to make the world right.”  
“Have you heard any new news about her brother?” Molly asked fretfully.  
“None,” I sighed. “She didn’t want to talk about it when she stopped by, but I did ask.”  
“I wonder if she’d divulge any new information if I asked her…,” Molly mused. She dug her phone from her pocket and started typing away, likely asking Avalon about her brother.  
“Her writing’s better than yours, John,” Sherlock decided.  
John looked offended. “Sorry?” His voice had gone up in pitch and he sounded incredulous. “Give that here.” He snatched the paper from Sherlock’s hands.  
“Hey—” Sherlock began.  
“Please don’t rip my paper, I’d like to read the rest of it,” I said idly as I sighed at another student’s roll of parchment—a complete waste of it, too, as nearly everything on this piece was wrong. “Will these students _ever_ learn?” Muttering to myself, I left correction marks across the paper as John murmured to himself about the article Avalon had made.  
Sherlock looked over my shoulder at the article. “Dear Merlin.”  
“That’s what I’m thinking.”  
“Not even the content, the penmanship is _atrocious!”_  
I turned around to stare at him. “The horrible content doesn’t matter to you—of all people!—but the _handwriting_ does?!”  
“Yes! Legible handwriting is very important and beautiful penmanship is taken for far too much granted,” Sherlock said matter-of-factly. I had only a moment or two more to stare at him before John tossed the paper back onto my desk.  
“Okay, _yes,_ maybe she is a better writer than me,” he admitted.  
“Ha!” Sherlock crowed, triumphant.  
“Oh, shut up!” John scolded.


	5. Sherlock Holmes

Only two days after the article was released, the case reached its worst peak—and we knew about it before Avalon even did.  
Sitting in my office on a summer day while most students were outside and the Ravenclaw Quidditch team was practicing on the field, I was surprised to find the students I have given permission to use the field come running back, looking stricken and pale, still in their robes, their brooms limp at their sides. Their hands were clenched so loosely I was surprised the brooms had yet to fall out of their hands.  
I frowned. “Yes? What is it?”  
The two Ravenclaws in front of me—Dominique Bea and Thomas Carrin—both looked far too shocked for it to be anything normal. “Sir…” Dominique’s voice was scratchy and hoarse, hardly there.  
“What’s happened, Miss Bea?”  
“Sir,” Thomas interjected, glancing at Dominique, who didn’t look like she could manage anything else, “down on the field…” He swallowed. “There’s t-two bodies. A Ravenclaw and a Gryffindor. They’re...dead.”  
I shot out of my seat. “Is the team still down there?”  
“Yes, we weren’t sure what to do—”  
“Hurry, get to Professor McGonagall. Tell her.” I wooshed out of my classroom, hurrying to John and Lestrade. I knocked on both of their doors and told them what had happened. We rushed down to the field and saw other teachers streaming down to the field, the cries of the Ravenclaw team already reaching us.  
Upon entering the field, I hurried to the bodies to find two of the school’s top students—Ravenclaw Seraphina Misy and Gryffindor Emmitt Whittaker, both fourth years. I knelt by the bodies. “They were dating; they came down here to snog, not realizing the Quidditch team was on its way, and they were murdered here on the field. They both bear the same markings as described in Foster’s case.”  
This was met with cries of fear and outrage.  
“No bruising...but lots of stab wounds. It appears as though Whittaker tried to protect Misy and bears the brunt of the wounds. Judging from the distance between them, Misy tried to run for it—possibly at Whittaker’s order—and was killed”—I turned the body over—“by this.” I pointed to a hole in her back. “Not a spell—that’s made by a bullet, so the murderer has some knowledge of Muggle technology, which makes it more likely to be Muggle-born or half-blood.” I stood. “Grant—”  
“It’s Greg,” John corrected quietly, staring in absolute dismay at the body of Whittaker—one of his own House, I realized, as John was the Head of Gryffindor House.  
“—contact Avalon. Keep it hushed for now, but we need her and her team here. They need to know about this. Meanwhile, Minerva—can you try to search for anyone that doesn’t belong on the grounds?”  
“I’ll do my best,” the Headmistress promised.  
“John, get the rest of the students back into the school; do not tell them what has happened, but get them into the Great Hall. I’ll come up with a formal address. Molly, Madam Pomfrey—get the bodies to the hospital wing the moment all students are in the Great Hall.” I turned to my Quidditch team, softening my voice and my eyes. “All of you—I know you discovered the bodies and I know this is hard for you, but I need you to keep quiet about what you’ve seen for now. If you are all willing, I’m sure Head Auror Foster would like to hear about what you saw when she gets here.”  
After several heartbeats of hesitation, each of the Quidditch members nodded. The youngest player—a second-year who reminded me of myself at that age—clung to his older sister, who put an arm around him as she stared at Seraphina Misy, who—I remembered—had been her best friend.  
John amplified his voice, shouting for all students to return to the Great Hall immediately and with haste. I hoped he would remember to call the roll when everyone was inside; it would do no good if we were missing some students.  
Lestrade Apparated off the grounds with McGonagall’s permission to bend the magic. Madam Pomfrey and Molly hurried the bodies to the hospital wing out of sight of the students. Moriarty, McGonagall, and I walked back to the castle. I could feel the strong sweeping spell McGonagall was working on, sending it out to sweep the entirety of the grounds.  
“You suspect that the murderer has infiltrated Hogwarts? Is he still here?” Moriarty asked me as we hurried through the halls back to our offices.  
“I can’t be sure,” I admitted, “but I’m sure Foster will have an idea.”  
“Foster?”  
I shrugged. “She knows the case better than I do. She might have some idea what this murderer may do after killing his victims.”  
“There should be a pattern, shouldn’t there be?” Moriarty mused. “But the last two victims—for if we include the students—seem to be a bit...random, don’t they?”  
Tension coiled in my gut. There was something in Moriarty’s eyes very close to what he had once held before being obliviated—a murderous gleam, the glimmer of a dangerous psychopath. “If anything it’s the previous victims and the students that seem random. There seems to be a personal connection with at least one of the victims before the students—Tom Leesion. Perhaps there is something personal with Katie Smith as well. But Hogwarts students? It seems to be a bit random.”  
“Yes,” Moriarty mused. “I don’t know what to make of it. How can a murderer go unnoticed, unfound, for this long?”  
I almost said _“You did,”_ but caught myself before the words slipped out. Though Moriarty did have a good portion of his memories as well as several forged ones, his murderous habits had been erased from his mind. “Either a murderer who is very stupid and stumbles upon something that works or one that is very very brilliant.”  
“Which do you think it is?”  
“I’m not sure yet,” I said, folding my hands together above my mouth, right underneath my nose. “I hope Foster’s got a good idea about what’s going on here.”


	6. Avalon Foster

The silence of the hospital room was near deafening. Thanks to some strings pulled by Mycroft, my brother had gotten a room entirely to himself.   
Natalie had gone to get herself some food, so I sat alone with my brother, squeezing his hand even though he couldn’t feel it. And to fill the silence, I spoke to him.   
“This case, Avery, I just...I don’t know anymore. I’m no closer to an answer than I was when the first and second victims were found, and here we are at seven. I wish you were here, Avery. I wish I could talk to you. You might have some good advice—you always do, big brother.” I sighed heavily. “And then there’s the matter of that Sherlock Holmes… Even with the picture of him on Mycroft’s desk and how much he talks about him… I didn’t realize how _different_ they are. Not to mention Sherlock’s kinda...I dunno...cute? Is that the word? I don’t really know, honestly. There’s no way to really describe him, I suppose.” I stared at him and squeezed his hand. “You know, we thought you were waking up twenty minutes ago. All the signs said you were and Mycroft let me leave work to come here and I thought that maybe, just maybe, I’d get my brother back.” I gaze sadly at his face, still the same as it had been the last time I’d been at St. Mungo’s, though almost completely healed from the crash. “Why couldn’t you have woken up, Avery? Just for me? For Natalie? Just a few minutes just to let us know you’re still there.”  
It was silent once more for several long minutes before there was a gasp behind me that made me jump and whirl in my seat, wand at the ready—only to find Greg Lestrade standing behind me with panic in his eyes.  
_“Lestrade?”_  
“Avalon—come quick—two new murders—students—at Hogwarts.”  
My eyes went wide as tea saucers. “No,” I whispered. “Not students.”  
He nodded.  
My stomach churned. “Yes, I’m coming, just—hold on, I need to write a note to Natalie—”  
“Mycroft, Donovan, and Anderson are already on their way up to the school. They should already be there, but they’ve promised to wait until you’ve arrived to start the investigation. Professor Holmes—he’s the Deputy Headmaster—is addressing the students now.”  
“How were the bodies found?”   
“The Ravenclaw Quidditch team. They went right to Sherlock, he’s their Head of House just like Moriarty’s head of Slytherin, John’s head of Gryffindor, and I’m head of Hufflepuff—”  
“Greg, stop rambling.”  
“Er, right, yes. Anyway, Sherlock’s taken a quick look at the bodies, they’re the same as the last two, that’s why we’ve called you in or else we would have tried to get someone else, we know you’re busy with your case—but we’re, well, _he’s_ pretty sure the murders are connected.”  
“In my life, they always are,” I grumbled, finishing up scribbling my note to Natalie. “Okay, let’s go.” Together we Apparated from St. Mungo’s straight to the edge of Hogwarts grounds. Greg took off at a run up the long drive, I flew overhead as a phoenix. I’d dropped the fanciful and dramatic flames, favoring a normal transition from human to Animagus form.  
By the time we got to the school, my wings were straining from disuse and Greg was panting. But we kept moving through the halls and Greg wheezed to me, “Gre...at...Great Hall. Sher-lo-lock’s addressing the...school.”  
I let out a sing-songy note and swooped toward the doors of the Great Hall. In mid-speech, Professor Holmes looked up, somehow managing to meet my eyes. I glided down to him and transformed in the air to my feet would hit the ground and I could stand immediately. I stopped myself by running a few steps forward, away from the students and toward Professors McGonagall, Moriarty, and Watson, all of whom were standing behind Professor Holmes.  
Professor Holmes had gone back to speaking to the students. “...so I beseech you to remain calm despite the circumstances. Head Auror Foster, who has just arrived, as you saw, will find the culprit. Rest assured it is not a student, so you needn’t fear amongst yourselves.” His voice became somber. “Now on a personal note…” He couldn’t stop the heavy sigh that came out of him. “It is not an easy thing to lose a friend. Death takes without consideration of who it is truly stealing from. In death, Seraphina Misy and Emmitt Whittaker might find peace, but leave behind grieving family and friends.  
“I knew Miss Misy personally. She was in my House, one of the most willing students to learn. And I must confess, though I deeply regret never having told her this before…” He took a shaking breath—and were those _tears_ in his eyes? Concern laced my face as he continued. “I must confess I thought of Seraphina as no less than a daughter, just as I care for each of my students as my own children.  
“Her loss, and that of Mister Whittaker, another brilliant student always so eager to learn, will be ever-present on my heart and on yours. But as we mourn, remember them as they were, happy and smiling and brilliant, forever bringing laughter to the lips of those around them—even we as professors found them to be a joy.  
“But on a legal matter, as this has sadly become, as the case continues, anything you might know would be of great help to Head Auror Foster and her team. If you know anything, anything at all, about the deaths of your fellow students, we ask that you bring this information forward to the Aurors or us professors if you are uncomfortable speaking to Aurors Foster, Donovan, and Anderson or the Minister—”  
“Why should we go to them?” a Ravenclaw who had tears streaming down his face said, standing up. “They haven’t gotten anywhere on the case outside of the school, why should they do anything now that it’s here?”  
A cry of outrage and agreement rose up in response.  
“Please, students, settle down—” Professor Holmes began, but I had already put my wand to my throat, amplifying my voice.  
“No, no, it’s alright, Professor,” I said calmly, stepping forward. “He’s right. Young man, what is your name?”  
“Samuel Timmins.”  
“Well, Samuel, you’re right. We haven’t gotten anywhere. We’re stuck and I’m spread thin—I have Aurors spread out across the country searching for this murder. We have a few leads, but they are precious little. Following them may amount to either everything...or nothing.” I met his eyes. “Timmins, you said?”  
Samuel nodded.  
“Your mother is one of my Aurors, and your father works with MACUSA, correct? Yes. Your mother is one of the Aurors I have in London near where the first victim was found. Your father is helping me work with MACUSA for more Aurors and more people on forensics to study the bodies and fingerprints—”  
“Is that ’cause you gotta Squib on forensics?” a Slytherin interrupted.  
“Anderson is gifted enough to see what we as wizards overlook, believing our magic to be the answer to everything. It was Anderson who discovered the change in the pattern the murderer has used up until the previous victims, Katie Smith and Tom Leesion.” I scanned the others. “Any other questions that will impede me on this case?”  
Samuel and the Slytherin had the good sense to look abashed in realizing they were wasting my precious little time. Slowly, they both slunk back down into their seats and stared at the tables.  
I turned to Greg. “The hospital wing, now. Professor Holmes, it might be wise of you to join us.”  
He nodded his head. “Minerva—?”  
“I’ll take it from here,” the Headmistress promised.  
As we hurried down to the hospital wing, I glanced at the professor who was still struggling to retain his emotions. “Can I ask you a question?”  
“Shoot.”  
“Why was it you? Shouldn’t Minerva have been the one to do it from the start?”  
“A Ravenclaw student was killed. The Ravenclaw team found them. I am the Head of Ravenclaw, I think I should have had a few words.” His voice was impossibly quiet, his voice shaking in the slightest. I would have continued the conversation if it weren’t for the Minister joining us from the Great Hall with Donovan and Anderson at his side.  
“Foster—you’re going to have to solve this quickly,” Donovan rasped, pale.  
I flicked my eyes to her. “What’s happened? Another body?”  
She nodded, holding out her phone. “An Auror found him in Big Ben, same as Leesion: strangulation, a later stab to the heart and another to the jugular, all cut up the same way.”  
I hissed in frustration and fury. “Donovan, get started on mapping out any connections you can find between all of the victims. Make sure you add Seraphina Misy and Emmitt Whittaker to the list, along with...who is this newest victim?”  
Donovan swallowed harshly. “Sebastian Wilkes.”  
My head swiveled to her sharply at the same time Professor Holmes’s did. _“From Gringotts?”_  
She nodded.  
I took a deep breath. “Hurry, look for connections and have a team of the best Aurors you can compile look into Wilkes’s murder. Make sure the Auror who found him writes a report.”  
“I don’t have a—”  
“Take my office,” Professor Holmes interjected.  
Donovan nodded and ran for the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.  
“As for us, we need to get a move on,” Anderson piped up. “If we don’t solve this fast, we’re going to have an entire school’s worth of families at our door demanding recompense.”  
“That, or an empty school,” Mycroft added. His eyes flicked to Professor Holmes, who had started to inch up toward Greg. “Hello, brother dear.”  
The professor flinched. Sighing with resignation, he said, “Hello, Mycroft.” He eyed his brother. “Diet going well?”  
There was a twitch in Mycroft’s face, one I had come to associate with the kind of annoyance that would start a war. I snapped my fingers in both of their faces. “The brotherly greetings and jibes can wait. For now, we have a murder to solve.”  
“Yes, right! Thank you, Avalon,” Mycroft agreed, nodding, though he was still glaring daggers even _I_ could feel at his little brother.  
Reaching the hospital wing, we found Madam Pomfrey and Molly, the former pacing and the latter sitting, wringing her hands, beside the two bodies.  
When she saw me, Molly jumped up. “Oh, Avalon, oh it’s horrible, absolutely horrible!”  
“I know,” I promised her.   
I had thought in all of my career that I had seen the worst I ever would. I had seen wounds, I had seen spells that backfired, I had seen death. I had even come to expect the worst in every situation—this one being no different. But what I saw on those two students, teenagers with the ability to change the world but just barely old enough to be taken seriously by most, made my stomach churn with anger, disgust, and the thirst for vengeance.  
Casting my eyes to the floor, I closed my eyes and forced myself to take a breath. When I was sure the few contents of my stomach were not going to come up, I forced my eyes back to the bodies.  
“Have you not cleaned them up at all?” I asked, glancing to Molly and Madam Pomfrey.  
“Yes, we’ve wiped up some of the blood,” Madam Pomfrey replied. “I know it doesn’t look like we have…” She stopped, noticing I was no longer listening.  
The wounds appeared to have been inflicted with a knife—perhaps an army knife—in quick cuts. Whereas the wounds on Tom Leesion’s body had been blindly made, the result of a high-running, passionate emotion—likely anger or hate, as Leesion had been murdered—the bodies of the two students bore much more calculated wounds. Each wound was thin and perfectly straight at what appeared to be an even depth—these markings had been made meticulously.  
And the blood…  
It was everywhere, running in rivulets down the students’ fronts and soaking into the white linens of the beds beneath them. Crimson pools lay across their chests and stomachs, seeping into their robes. Seeing where my gaze lingered, Molly picked up a towel, passed me one, and we got to work, dabbing the blood from their bodies. It took us a long time—during which, Anderson would not let either Holmes close to the body and Greg stared very hard at the floor—to sponge off all of the blood—which just seemed to keep coming—but at last they bodies were clear of the scarlet liquid.  
“Anderson—take a look,” I said, stepping away and waving him forward.  
He bobbed his head once in confirmation and stepped close, dropping his bag of equipment to the floor. He didn’t try to bother concealing the look of horror and disgust that appeared on his face at his first glance at the bodies. Glancing sparingly at our company, he drew the curtains around the two beds closed.  
Professor Holmes stepped forward. “Can I—?”  
I held out an arm. “Professor, please,” I begged, “do not look at them.”  
“But they’re my students.” The look of pain on his face was enough to make my heart twist itself up into a knot. For a man as unfeeling as he—if Mycroft’s tales were to be believed—this much emotion must have been tearing him into shreds. “Can’t I please just—”  
“Professor Holmes, you called Seraphina something like a daughter in your speech. For your sake—for the sake of her memory, for the sake of your sanity—I ask that you please stand by and do not look at the bodies.” Turning my outstretched arm to him to squeeze his arm, I met his eyes—beautiful but full of disappointment and despair. “Please, Professor.”  
He ripped his eyes away from mine, toward the figures behind a sheet—Molly, Anderson, Pomfrey, and the two students. “But I saw them on the field…” There was something like...confusion in his voice. Clearly this was not typical of him, as both Greg and Mycroft were staring at him as if he was some foreign creature.  
Discreetly, I clicked my fingers in the pattern all of Greg’s Aurors had known when he had been Head Auror—the pattern that signaled they were not helping a grieving family member. “They were bloody. The wounds were harder to see.” I squeezed his arm again, harder this time, as he tried to step forward. “Trust me. No father would want to see his daughter as mutilated as she is.”  
That’s when he started to really put up a fight, attempting to pull himself from my grasp. But Mycroft’s hand came down on his shoulder. “Brother mine,” Mycroft said softly, “please.”  
“No father would want to see his daughter as bloodied up as she was, but I did. Please, I was her teacher, her mentor, her father, I deserve this one last chance to see her!”  
I glanced at Greg. “When a victim is hurt this badly, we have the right to turn even family away until he or she can be cleaned up properly before the funeral.” I shook my head and my heart nearly shattered at the unbearable agony and fury mixed in Professor Holmes’s face. “I’m sorry, Professor Holmes.”  
“It’s for the best, Sherlock,” Mycroft added.  
Greg cleared his throat. “Avalon…”  
My eyes flicked to him.  
“We can override the familial connection claims by the fact that he is not her biological father.”  
“He’s her teacher.”  
“Fine, alright, then we can override it with the idea that he’s the _Defense Against the Dark Arts_ teacher. The murderer has magic—he could have used Dark Magic to kill them, even though it doesn’t look like it, and Sherlock’s trained with Muggle weapons. He’s bloody brilliant, that’s what he is, and observational, too. He’s good with this kind of thing. Let him examine the body and he can say his goodbyes at the same time.”  
“Greg, this isn’t a good idea—” But my voice broke off when I saw their faces: Mycroft was shaking his head no, Greg was nodding, and Professor Holmes...he wore the saddest expression I had ever seen. I could only liken it to the face my own father had worn when we learned about my little sister’s passing.   
So I squeezed his arm again—gently, as if to comfort him—before dropping my hand. “Alright. Are you sure you want to see this?”  
He nodded.  
“It’s gruesome. It turns the stomach.”  
But still he nodded.  
I sighed. “Alright.” I pulled the curtains back. “Anderson, make room. Professor Holmes is going to examine them, too.”  
“What? Miss Foster, is this really wise—?” I silenced him with a look of agreement. His gaze flicked to Greg and he nodded. “Fine.”  
Professor Holmes made for Seraphina Misy, but I steered him toward Emmitt Whittaker. “Build your courage,” I whispered to him, keeping my words quiet and my mouth close to his ear, though I had to lift my heels off the ground a little to do so.  
So he examined Whittaker. He made notes and comments here and there about the wound, all of which Anderson jotted down, even though he was making a face the whole time.  
Professor Holmes moved to Seraphina Misy with apprehension written all over his face. Mycroft stepped close to me. “Keep an eye on him,” he murmured in low tones. “My brother may not be prone to emotion, but he’s grown attached to the girl.”  
“Seraphina, Mycroft, her name was Seraphina.” The professor glanced at his brother underneath his eyelashes. Mycroft was eight used to this or had the good sense not too look alarmed that the younger Holmes had overheard.  
The Minister offered his little brother a tight smile and turned away, stepping farther from me once more.  
And at last Professor Holmes looked at Seraphina. It took him a solid two minutes before he could start rattling off his list of comments. But when he opened his mouth, it wasn’t words that came out—it was the sound that often came from one’s mouth before vomit followed.  
He raised his arm to his mouth quickly, covering his mouth with his wrist. Panic—or something akin to it—flashed in his eyes and the younger Holmes took off at a run away from the hospital wing. Without sparing a second, I dashed after him.  
“Anderson, continue,” Greg ordered before trying to follow me. I stopped, wasting precious seconds as Holmes’s flapping robes disappeared around the corner.   
“No, no, stay!” I hissed, waving a hand at him to go back. “I’ll handle it.” Without waiting for his response, I took off, following the echoing sounds of the professor’s footsteps.  
Professor Holmes rounded the next corner just as I entered the hallway and his footsteps stopped abruptly. I was close enough to hear the sound of him vomiting.  
Worse, still, was the choked sobs that reached me next.


	7. Sherlock Holmes

Some people might have given me privacy upon hearing me lose the contents of my stomach. If they had rushed to see if I was okay, they would have stopped the moment I— _me_ , the emotionless, heartless bastard that I was—started to cry.  
But Avalon Foster was not most people. I could hear her footsteps—tiny, light little things, even as she ran—approach me and the next thing that alerted me to her presence was the hand that offered me a light touch of comfort and warning on my back.  
I had collapsed in my own vomit when I’d started to cry and I hadn’t bothered to drag myself out of it, even as part of me recoiled at the slime that covered my hands and knees and robes; but Avalon was not daunted by this. She crouched near me, at the edge of the pool of bile, and reached into her coat pocket. Putting her hand on my shoulder and leaning slightly to steady herself, she took the handkerchief she’d produced and wiped my mouth and chin with it.  
I turned my red, watery eyes on her. I couldn’t say anything as my lower lip trembled but she seemed to understand. She started to nod.  
“Let’s get you cleaned up.” Her voice was impossibly quiet and soft. I wondered how many people she had seen make messes of themselves upon seeing someone they cared about lying dead. Upon standing—with the help of the hand she offered me, which I took with a wince (for my hands were still covered in my slimy vomit)—I realized my predicament was even worse: not only had I vomited in the hall, not only was it all over me, not only was I still shaking, not only was I still crying (albeit softer now), I had soiled myself as well. The stench of urine tainted the already foul-smelling odor coming from the vomit on the floor.  
She put her arm around me, just under my arms. “Come on, Professor, it’s alright,” she crooned. “I’ve seen worse, I promise.”  
“From a man like me?”  
“I must admit I don’t exactly know what you mean, Professor.”  
“Oh, you must. Surely Mycroft complains of me often. And don’t call me ‘Professor’, you are not one of my students. My name is Sherlock.” I was rambling. What was I supposed to say to the woman who had seen me like this, who had warned me not to do the very thing that had gotten me into this situation?  
“Alright, then, Sherlock. Come on, I’ll get you cleaned up.” With her arm holding me up, she and I walked through my mess and into the prefect’s bathing room. Either she didn’t notice the sign or didn’t care—the latter, it seemed, to be most likely as her eyes flicked around a bit nervously and said, “Ah, good. No one here. Just you and me.” She gestured to the edge of one of the baths. “Sit?”  
I nodded and did as she asked, holding my slimed hands away from me. She crouched in front of me, took a soft towel, and wiped the vomit from my hands and front. Gently as possible, she dabbed the rest of it off my face.   
“Th-thank you,” I said, ashamed at the stuttering in my voice. Avalon, of course, noticed. She cupped my face in her hand.  
“It’s okay, Sherlock. This is a completely normal thing,” she promised. I found myself nearly melting into her voice, which was soothing and comforting, far from the authoritative tone she had used the other day in the Great Hall speaking to Lestrade.  
“I should have listened to you, you were right, it was a terrible idea, I shouldn’t have looked—”  
“Shhh, it’s alright, it’s okay, relax. Sherlock, please, look at me.” I stopped my rambling to meet her eyes, the tone of her voice, firm yet kind, and those words— _Sherlock, please_ —stopping me in my tracks. Avalon took my head and gave it a slight squeeze. “Don’t think about it until you’re ready, okay? You need time. I will give you all the time in the world before you have to start apologizing—and even then, _never_ apologize for wanting to see her. Do you hear me? Don’t apologize. For _any_ of this.”  
“Not even for getting you covered in my vomit?”  
“No, not even for that,” she said with a slight chuckle. “Now come on, here’s something my brother and I used to do all the time to calm ourselves down. It helped when our little sister, Talie, died. Squeeze my hand after I squeeze ours, alright?” She squeezed my hand. I stared at her. She squeezed again. “Come on, Sherlock. Just a squeeze.” She did it again. This time, I squeezed back. “Good,” she breathed, squeezing my hand again. I squeezed back. We repeated this until my heart rate slowed to a steady, acceptable pace.  
“Did I do it right?” I murmured. Something about continually squeezing her hand, actively not thinking about Seraphina, and staring into those kind, forgiving eyes had made me sleepy.  
“You did just fine,” she murmured. Her eyes dropped to my soiled clothing, on which my vomit had dried and crusted. She grimaced. “You need new clothes. Possibly a bath.” She stood. “I’ll draw you one.”  
I swung my legs out of the deep bathtub and stood on shaky legs. Avalon made sure I could stand before she walked to the faucet and turned it on. She dumped soap to create bubbles in it and I frowned.  
“I don’t bathe with bubbles—”  
“I’m cleaning you and I have no intention of seeing your Nether regions.” She put her hands on her hips, speaking very matter-of-factly, bringing a hot blush to my cheeks. “I’m putting in bubbles to spare us both the embarrassment of it.”  
It took some time for the large bath to fill. When Avalon was satisfied with the amount of water in it, she shut the faucet off and waved me over from the toilet seat I’d perched myself on. “C’mere,” she murmured.  
Avalon helped me out of my clothes as it proved I could not get out of them myself with how stiff with vomit and spittle and tears they had become. She let me handle my underclothes, for which I was grateful, turning away as I did so and only turning back around when I had sunk deep into the bath, covered myself with bubbles, and told her my body was hidden from her sight.  
“I’ll let you sit and soak for a while, all right? And I’ll fetch you some clothes while I’m at it,” she added. “I’m assuming they’d be in your rooms?”  
I nodded.  
“I’ll be off, then.”  
“Avalon, wait!” I called.  
She turned around.  
“Thank you,” I said, hoping the sincerity of the statement was conveyed.  
Avalon smiled. “Of course.” Then she left the bathing room, leaving me alone in the warm water, covered in bubbles. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes to keep the tears from leaking out of my eyes. I had cried enough for today.


	8. Avalon Foster

The pity I felt for that man...it could not be measured, nor put into words. I couldn’t be sure what it was like to lose a child—how could I, I was not married and had no children, as I had never had a romantic relationship of any sort—but I had lost my little sister. I knew what loss could do to a person. I’d experienced it, seen it.  
Sherlock Holmes—he was an elaborate man. Complicated to the finest degree, it seemed nearly impossible to decide what kind of man he really was.  
I myself reeked of his vomit as I hurried through the halls, but a quick wave of my wand cured that and the mess in the hallway.   
His rooms, when I reached them, were immaculate and tidy, a place I would consider calm but blank. I preferred colors, designs, paintings. I liked some sort of personalization...yet there wasn’t much in Sherlock’s rooms.  
But on his desk...there were three separate pictures: one of him and Mycroft as kids (I only knew because I’d come across the same picture in Mycroft’s desk), one of him and John, both laughing, and...one of all of the teachers, each of them grinning. A smile pulled at my lips as I realized that the Molly in the photograph kept leaning in to kiss Sherlock’s cheek, which flared red in response.  
I dug through his wardrobe until I found enough new clothes for him. Folding them, I tucked them under my arm and then hurried back to the hospital wing.  
“How is he?” were the first words out of Mycroft’s mouth. He didn’t seem to realize that everyone had turned to stare at him—it wasn’t typical of Mycroft Holmes to display concern, especially not for his little brother.  
“He’ll be fine,” I promised.  
“Where is he?”   
“He’s soaking in a bath right now. I’ve cleaned him up—vomited all over himself.” I elected to leave out the part of losing control of his bladder as I lifted the clothes. “I’m bringing these to him.”  
“I can—”  
“Minister, no offense to you, but I think Professor Holmes would prefer if it... _wasn’t_ you.”  
“No offense to _you,_ Head Auror,” Mycroft snipped, “but I think _I_ would prefer if it wasn’t a woman besides our mother cleaning him.”  
Stomach churning with anger, a burning sensation encircled my neck. Was this anger or embarrassment ripping into me? “I’m the only person who seems to give a damn about what happens to him, I’m the only person he’ll let near—and only because I’ve already seen him like this.” I stormed out of the hospital wing, seeing Molly and Greg watching with apprehensive expressions. Both knew the fights between Mycroft and myself were explosive.  
And suddenly I thought of the picture on Sherlock’s desk, of Molly kissing Sherlock’s cheek. Glancing at her beneath my eyelashes, I wondered if I’d been too quick to claim I was the only one who cared. And about a man who I had only just met.  
“Get John Watson,” Mycroft called after me as I left. Just before I slammed the door he added, “He’s someone who cares! Sherlock’ll let _him_ help!”  
For that comment—I’d heard about the speculations between Sherlock and John Watson—I slammed the door even harder.

With his eyes closed and his head leaned back, his arms holding him up on the ledge behind him, Sherlock looked at peace with both himself and the world. I almost didn’t want to interrupt him, but I doubted he’d appreciate it if I sat there and watched him (especially seen as he was naked).  
The thought of his nudity propelled me forward—the faster he was in clothes, the better off both of us would be.  
_I would prefer if it wasn’t a woman besides our mother cleaning him._  
Mycroft’s words echoed in my head. My stomach clenched, tightening in what I could easily identify as anger. What did Mycroft think I was going to do—take advantage of a grieving man with nothing left in him but sorrow?  
“I’ve got you clothes,” I said, walking forward on soft feet. Sherlock jumped a mile and whipped his head to me, panic flaring briefly in his eyes before settling back down.  
“Oh, it’s you,” he breathed.  
“Sorry I scared you,” I said. “It was never my intention.” I set the clothes down a little ways away from the tub surround. “Do you think you can clean yourself or do you still want help?” Mycroft’s words were getting to me. Normally I was not one to shy away from a promise I’d made, but this was my boss’s little brother and my boss had displayed his distaste at my being anywhere near his little brother.  
“I could probably do it myself,” he said slowly, but his eyes were latched on mine and he clearly saw something in them, “but because it’s likely Mycroft’s fault you seem nervous to touch me, the answer is yes, I want your help.”  
“How did you know?” I asked, taking off my coat and rolling up the sleeves of my shirt.  
“A poet shirt,” he remarked.  
“More comfortable than you’d think,” I admitted. “I spend a majority of my time in clothes from the 18th and 19th centuries.”  
“Interesting,” he remarked. “As for how I knew it was Mycroft, it’s _always_ Mycroft. He’s done the same thing to another woman who tried to help me when I needed it most.”  
I studied him for a minute, calculated the sadness in his face, and guessed, “Molly?”  
“Molly,” Sherlock agreed, his voice a breathy whisper.  
I only had to study him for a minute before I realized: _He loves her, doesn’t he? And he’ll deny it—deny it until he dies, but he loves her._ Something about that made me feel unbelievably happy and light yet so unbearably sad at the same time, so I finished pushing up my sleeves, rolled my pants to just above my knees.  
He raised both eyebrows.  
“I’m going to have to sit on the edge with my legs in the water. I’d prefer not to have to borrow clothes from Molly—I’m a few inches taller. Her clothes are awfully uncomfortable.”  
Sherlock snorted with laughter and I let myself smile.   
“Alright, come on, I’ll start washing. I’ve got to get behind you to wash your hair.”  
“My _hair?_ I didn’t get anything in my hair!”  
I smiled, leaning closer to him as I sat on the ledge behind him, Sherlock scooting forward so I could set, and put my legs on either side of him. I pulled a bottle of shampoo closer and wet his hair. I dumped some of the shampoo into my hands and began working it into his hair.  
Sherlock’s response was immediate—his head tilted back, leaning into my touch. Murmured words came from his mouth, but I couldn’t catch what they were. I didn’t ask him what he was saying, either, the expression on his face perfectly enough: he was enjoying this.  
I washed his hair for longer than I needed to, allowing him the feeling of my fingers carding through his hair. He deserved this one comfort, even if I couldn’t bring myself to do much more. When I finally washed the soap from his hair, I rubbed his scalp and pretended not to notice the little moan of happiness he let out.  
I washed his back next, working his tense muscles at the same time, the warm water had already done some help to the tense muscles in his body. It was clear he’d been overworking himself for quite some time.  
My fingers worked his shoulders, his lower back, his neck, every muscle in his back. And even though I knew it must hurt, he leaned into my touch.  
“Thank you,” he murmured, “thank you thank you thank you.”  
“What are you thanking me for?”  
“This is the first I’ve been babied—the first I’ve let myself _get_ babied—since I was a kid.” His hand came up over his shoulder, taking mine and squeezing. I squeezed back. We continued the back and forth as he continued, “So I guess it’s nice to have someone else on my side to take care of me.”  
I learned forward so he could see my face. “This seems very out of character for you.”  
“Let me guess—Mycroft’s told you all about how I’m an emotionless bastard?”  
“He doesn’t generally phrase it like that, but...yeah, pretty much.” I smirked as he rolled his eyes. “Is that a wrong thing to say?”  
“I wouldn’t say so, no,” he admitted. “I don’t generally show Mycroft this side of me.”  
“The soft side?”  
“He thinks I’m stupid enough as it is, I don’t need it to get worse,” Sherlock grumbled. I laughed again and finally a smile began to pull at his lips.  
I’d finished washing his back. “Can you do the rest of you?” He leaned back against me, opening his mouth with a smirk that revealed a snarky comment, but before he could speak, I exclaimed, “Sherlock! I’m soaked now!” I lightly smacked his head.  
“Ow!” But he laughed and was still grinning. _He likes this banter between us._ My eyes met his and I grinned. I could hardly see the color of his eyes in the dark that had fallen in the prefect bathroom—the sun was beginning to sink, after all—but I could still see in my mind that gorgeous gaze. A sudden desire to learn what his eye color was pulled at me.  
“Anyway, can you wash?”  
“I promised I’d wash beneath the waist, didn’t I?”  
“Yes…”  
“But did I say anything about my chest? That’s for you.”  
I stared at him for several moments. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”  
Sherlock laughed—hard, too, and it took him quite a few minutes to calm down, and during that time I found myself giggling and grinning.  
In the end, he washed himself on his own. We talked lightly as he finished up and I found myself being entertained by the man I would have assumed to be stoic and cold and professional at all times.  
I helped him out of the bath, forcefully keeping my eyes on the ceiling. He grinned cheekily at me. “Not a word,” I warned. He chuckled, got himself into his pants and trousers, and I helped him pull his shirt, waistcoat, and robes on.  
“Thank you, Avalon,” he said.  
“My help will always be yours,” I promised him. “Now why don’t we get you back to your brother—safe and unharmed—so he doesn’t kill me, eh?”  
Sherlock laughed. “That I can do.” Suddenly he went pale. “Do I...do I have to look at her again?”  
“Not if you don’t want to,” I promised, pity surging again.  
“I don’t think I want to,” he whispered.  
“Then I won’t make you look. Anderson’s more than capable—and now we’ve got Molly back...maybe I can press gang her into helping out with the case.”  
“I don’t think it’ll take much to get her to agree, not after this,” Sherlock mused. “Oh, we’ve got witnesses...of a sort. The Ravenclaw Quidditch team. They found the bodies.”  
My fist went in the air as we left the prefect’s bathroom. _“Yes! Witnesses!”_ I beamed at him. “I know it’s horrible, but we’ve suffered because we didn’t have witnesses. Now that we’ve got something close enough to it, the public might be less inclined to drag my name through the mud.”  
“Is that all you’re worried about?”  
“A bit,” I admitted, “but better is getting this lunatic in Azkaban.”  
“If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to shut the door to his cell.”  
“I’ll convince Mycroft, don’t worry.”  
“I can do that on my own, I promise.”  
I laughed.


	9. Mycroft Holmes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing Mycroft is hard, please don't kill me for how crappy this is.

Unease had settled in my stomach over a half an hour ago—had been about forty-five or fifty minutes since Avalon had chased after my little brother and nearly twenty-five minutes since Avalon had bitten my head off about giving him a bath.  
Both Greg and Molly had looked at me like I was crazy to try to stop her, but there was something about the ease with which Avalon and Sherlock responded to each other so soon after meeting that unsettled me. It was eerily similar to the way Sherlock and John had taken to each other.  
How long could it possibly _take_ a person to bathe?  
The urge to stop whatever was going on took over fairly quickly. It didn’t take long for me to find a reason to excuse myself and I hurried to the sound of laughter and conversation, which drifted through the castle passageway—coming directly from the prefect’s bathing room.  
Steps light as I could make them, I pushed open the door and propped it open with my umbrella, knowing it would slam when it closed if I wasn’t careful. I crept into the room, hearing the sounds of two more distinct voices—Sherlock’s baritone and Avalon’s faerie-light voice.  
What I saw when I rounded the corner, still cast in shadow, stopped my feet without my meaning to.  
They sat close together, Sherlock’s back to her, her legs on either side of him, Sherlock sitting in the water. And, by Merlin, they were both _smiling_ and _laughing._  
_Dear Merlin, are they becoming friends?!_  
Alarmed, I leaned against the wall, watching with growing unease.  
“Can you do the rest of you?” Avalon asked. In response, Sherlock leaned against her, a tell-tale smirk and a snarky comment on his lips. Yet the Head Auror exclaimed, “Sherlock! I’m soaked now!” She lightly smacked his head, scowling at him, but there was a note of playfulness in that scowl.  
“Ow!” But Sherlock laughed and _still_ bore that annoying smirk.   
There was a very long moment of silence. The two were staring at each other, each grinning. As Avalon’s gaze softened, my stomach sank into my shoes. She was looking at him the same way Molly looked at him.  
At last, Avalon cleared her throat. “Anyway, can you wash?”  
“I promised I’d wash beneath the waist, didn’t I?” I knew that smug grin on his face, that smirky tone in his voice.  
“Yes…”  
“But did I say anything about my chest? That’s for you.”  
Avalon stared at him for several moments. Though I’d hoped horror would show on her face, the only thing that _did_ show was faint amusement. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”  
Sherlock laughed—hard, too, and it took him quite a few minutes to calm down, and during that time Avalon was giggling merrily. The grin on Sherlock’s face was enough to make my stomach churn. He looked at John like that. He looked at Molly like that. He did not need to look like that when gazing into Avalon Foster’s eyes.  
Sherlock, thankfully, washed himself. Avalon moved out from behind him and stayed a few feet away, keeping her eyes to his face. I noticed Sherlock was careful to keep the bubbles covering himself.  
“So what exactly have you done to have the skills you have—your observations and all that?” Avalon asked.  
“I call them deductions,” Sherlock said. “Mycroft and I seemed to be born with them. Of course, _he_ was always the smarter one, as he liked to tell me often, so I thought I was an idiot when I was younger. Then we met other people.”  
Avalon laughed. “You? An idiot? Merlin, Mycroft must’ve been out of his mind to think that!”  
Sherlock shrugged. “As I said, we hadn’t met other people at the time. I _was_ an idiot to him. Anyway, I used to want to be a pirate, then an Auror. I trained very briefly to be an Auror, but I decided I didn’t want to work with ordinary, boring people who were also trying the job.”  
She snorted and played offended. “So I’m ordinary and boring?”  
“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Sherlock teased.  
She grinned. “So you have these deduction skills. Mycroft used his to get into the Ministry, you decided to use them to become a teacher?”  
“At first it wasn’t ideal. I was still looking for a job and a place to live when I met Lestrade and he told me about John.”  
“Skip the long story,” Avalon teased, “and tell me how you became a teacher.”  
“Well, I stayed in contact with Lestrade for all these years and when he told me about the murder of the _last_ DADA teacher, I decided to take the position. Minerva hired me and here we are.”  
“I wonder what it is—all these Headmasters and Headmistresses having abnormally long lives?”  
“I think it’s purely to make them deal with generations of the same family.”  
Avalon snorted.  
The longer they talked, the more nervous and uneasy I got. Though they spoke of general things, the way they laughed and joked and talked with ease made me feel hollow. Sherlock had already stolen Lestrade—the first person I had attempted to befriend and one of the best Aurors I had ever known—and now he was stealing the woman who had replaced him, one of the only other people I could tolerate.  
I supposed it was my fault, I had driven her away by trying to push her from my brother, but if I was going to pin the blame on anyone, it was going to be on Sherlock.  
Just when I had thought I had seen the worst of the new... _friendship_ Sherlock was forming, it got worse; _Avalon helped him clothe himself._  
I left the moment they’d pulled his robes over his shoulders. I left with horror, offense, and disgust in what some would call a heart.


	10. Avalon Foster

Sherlock had calmed himself down significantly by the time we returned to the hospital wing, giving me a brief glimpse of the control over his emotions he normally possessed. I had seen similar from Mycroft, but not once had I ever seen Mycroft open his heart to someone the way Sherlock had just done to me.  
I wonder how many people got to see that side of Sherlock, the tender side, the emotional side.  
_Get John Watson. He’s someone who cares._  
Nearly flinching as the sound of Mycroft’s voice floated through my head—it was never a good day when that happened—I realized he was right. Professor Watson and Molly were clearly two people who saw such a thing happen. I wondered if Greg was close enough to Sherlock to see the same.  
Had Mycroft ever seen this side of Sherlock? Was this once the _only_ side of Sherlock until Mycroft made him into the man everyone else saw?  
Pushing away my questions, I held the door open to Sherlock.  
“Sherlock!” The relief in Molly’s voice made me think once more of the photo on Sherlock’s desk. “Are you alright?”  
He waved away her concerns. “Yes, yes, fine. I promise,” he added as she fixed him with a disbelieving stare. Molly’s eyes flicked to me and I nodded. Relaxing once more, Molly returned to examining Seraphina Misy. When Sherlock noticed, his body tensed up and his fist clenched at his side. I put my hand on his back.  
“You don’t have to look,” I promised him in a low tone. He nodded again.  
“I...I know.” He took a deep breath, breathed out, and found himself somewhere in the madness of his mind. Composed once more, he strode forward to Greg and leaned on the wall beside him.  
“Anderson found anything yet?” I asked Greg in a low voice as Anderson muttered to himself.  
“Not that he’s told us,” Greg mumbled, watching Anderson and Molly anxiously. “Neither of them have said much of anything since you and Sherlock left. That’s the first time Molly’s spoken except to yell at the Minister for trying to stop you.”  
“She did what now?”  
“Yeah, I know,” Greg snorted. “Can you believe it?”  
“Law-abiding, rule-obeying Molly Hooper contradict the Minister of Magic himself, Mycroft Holmes? No, I can’t believe it.”  
“She gets like that now,” Sherlock murmured.  
“Really?”  
“Mmm,” Sherlock agreed, nodding sagely. “She never used to step a toe out of line, but now she’s quietly rebellious.”  
“Quietly rebellious,” I repeated, musing quietly to myself. “Interesting idea.” I realized the Minister, now that we’d mentioned him, wasn’t present. “Where'd His Majesty get to, anyway?”  
“He’s left twice since you did,” Greg said. "The first time was to check up on Donovan, the second to go talk to the Headmistress.” Greg shook his head. “Poor Minerva. She’s witnessed the deaths of so many of her students.”  
_“Witnesses!” _I lurched off the wall with my heart in my throat. “I almost forgot! The Quidditch team!” I spun to face Sherlock. “Can you get the team so I can speak to them—?”  
“Already done,” Mycroft drawled from the doorway. “They’re waiting in their common room, the other students are still waiting in the Great Hall. We await your results, Anderson.”  
“Still working,” Anderson muttered from his place beside Misy. He cut a brief glare in Mycroft’s direction before ducking his head low once more to continue his observations.  
“And Donovan?” I demanded. “How is her work going?”  
For a moment, Mycroft looked like a deer caught in headlights before he managed to shut his mouth, swallow, and said, “As good as any work can go, I suppose.”  
I cut him a sharp look. “Meaning?” I stalked toward him, eyes narrowing critically as I observed him. “You _did_ check up on her, did you not? Greg said you did.”  
“I got lost on the way to the office,” Mycroft mumbled, his cheeks reddening.  
Greg burst out laughing. “So _that’s_ why it took you so long to get back!” He chortled to himself, doing his best not to look Mycroft straight in the eye. Mycroft’s eye, I noted, had developed a tick.  
“You've been to my office before!” Sherlock cried. “How could you get lost?!”  
“I've never tried to get there from the _hospital wing!”_  
“Boys, calm down,” I chided. “It is a rather big, maze-like school. An honest mistake, getting lost, in Hogwarts. ”  
“Is it though?” Sherlock asked.  
I snorted with laughter, suddenly remembered Mycroft’s presence, then went silent. I cleared my throat as Anderson finally straightened, notepad in hand. “Come to a conclusion, Anderson?”  
“It’s meant as a message,” he explained and pointed to the bodies, tracing the patterns of the wounds in the air as he continued, “The wounds are formed meticulously, with even more care than any of the other victims, the first sign something was off. I drew them out and realized”—he showed his notepad to me as I moved closer, accepting the newspaper Greg offered to me though hardly glancing at the article he was pointing to—“that all of these wounds that touch each other forms a form of old runes.”  
My head swiveled to him. _“Runes?”_  
Anderson nodded. “My grandmother was a runecaster. I spent years of my life with her, watching her, learning from her. It’s an old dialect of some sort—I never learned enough to be able to tell what it is, but you might be able to get some answers from the Ancient Runes professor.”  
“And that is?”  
“Janine Hawkins,” Greg supplied.  
The pen Molly held in her hands clattered the floor. “You mean...the Ancient Runes professor we _never_ see is a woman who’s life _we”_ —she gestured between herself and I—“saved? And she doesn’t come down from that tower she lives in at all to say hi, or, oh, I don’t know, _thank you?”_  
Sherlock coughed awkwardly. “That might be my fault.”  
Molly sighed and I turned to look at him. “Why?”  
“I may or may not have dated her. And then broke things off. Rather abruptly. After proposing.”  
_“Sherlock!”_ I smacked him in the head with the newspaper. “Why would you do such a thing?!”  
“She wasn’t for me!”  
“You _proposed to her, you tool!”_ I huffed angrily, rolling my eyes. “Don’t do that to a girl, you idiot. One day she just might come back to kill you for it.”  
“Would she?”  
“Stilettos are a surprisingly good weapon.”  
“All heels, really,” Molly mused.  
I nodded. “All _shoes_ if we can think well enough.”  
“All _objects_ if we can think well enough,” Molly decided with a smile.  
Flashing her a feral grin, I looked back down at the newspaper. “All too right, Molly. Now what article was it you wanted me to read, Greg?” I smirked at the terrified expressions from the four men in the room.  
“This one,” he said, pointing at the column. “Skeeter’s back.”  
I groaned. “Oh, not _again!”_  
Sherlock frowned and leaned over my shoulder. “Skeeter? Rita Skeeter?”  
“Rita Skeeter,” I sighed. “The last time she wrote an article that had to do with me, it took me three months to sort out the lies and get the magical community to trust me again.” I glared at her name, printed out on the paper. “She dragged my name through trenches full of mud.”  
“Well, let’s see what she’s done now,” Mycroft sighed, looking more weary in that moment than as I had ever seen him. I recalled some years ago as he worked to become Minister, Skeeter had published an article detailing every aspect of his life—including his younger sister, Eurus, which had set the world ablaze with anger.  
So we crowded around and began to read:__

__**PUBLICITY STUNT — FOSTER A FRAUD?! **  
_Rita Skeeter_**** _ _

__****As the newest case Head Auror Avalon Foster drags on for nearly eleven weeks with ten victims in the wake of this vicious murderer, it seems more and more possible. With every passing day, Foster drags her feet and fights against solving these murders, bringing into question a new idea some may find highly plausible: _Foster herself is the murderer._  
Scandalous as it seems—for what does Foster have to gain from this? Committing these murders would invalidate her work and send her to Azkaban for sure—it appears to be the only possible solution. Why else would she spend so long floundering about instead of solving the case, as she’s doing now—at Hogwarts school.  
What could Foster be planning at Hogwarts? To kill a student, a teacher? If anyone, killing Professor Sherlock Holmes would benefit her. Ridding the world of a genius such as Sherlock Holmes would benefit her in more ways than one. If he were “gotten out of the way”, Foster’s plan could be continued on without problem and she would not be discovered—and it would deal a blow to Minister Holmes as well, weakening the Ministry and giving Foster the chance to strike within it.  
Avalon Foster is a woman of many talents, all of which could be used to take down the Ministry from the inside out. Dangerous as she is, she has another card up her sleeve as an Animagus. Taking the form of a phoenix, she could very easily burn Hogwarts, the Ministry, and all life as we know it.** ** _ _

The article continued, but I couldn’t read this horror anymore. Reading as much as I did made me feel very, very ill.  
I groaned, pushing the newspaper into Sherlock’s chest, stalking away from the others. “Burn Hogwarts! Where on earth does she _get_ these ideas?!”  
“That damned pen does it,” Mycroft snapped. “Nonsense. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about!”  
“Does she ever?” Sherlock snapped back, bristling. He sneered at the article, shaking his head.  
Greg glanced at Sherlock. “Erm, Sherlock, doesn’t this remind you of what…”  
Sherlock was nodding. He turned to me and gripped my shoulders. “Avalon, don’t let this get to you. Moriarty—he tried to frame me, paint me as a fraud, too. This, this here? What Skeeter is doing to you? This is exactly what he did to me.”  
I found myself nodding, even though I didn’t recall making myself do so. “I know. I remember. I worked the case. I’m the reason he was Obliviated, remember?”  
“Yes,” Sherlock breathed, nodding, still holding me tight, “but I know that the lies people can spin can shape who you think you are. I’ve been there. I understand it.” His fingers tightened on my shoulders.  
Mycroft cleared his throat. “If we’re done with the touchy-feely”—Sherlock and I glared at him—“I’ll be heading back to the Ministry to have a word with Skeeter. I’ll also see what I can do about Sebastian Wilkes.”  
I nodded. “Thank you. Text me the details.”  
“Of course,” Mycroft agreed with a brief nod.  
“Brother dear,” Sherlock called as Mycroft began to leave. Mycroft stopped, turned around, and waited for what Sherlock had to say. “If you can get Skeeter fired, please do so.”  
I had forgotten how unnerving it was when Mycroft smiled, and this smile was just as feral as any maniac’s could be. “Oh, it’d be my pleasure.”  
The door to the hospital wing shut with a heavy thud. I took a deep breath. “Alright. Anderson, keep watching the bodies. Let me know if anything appears—bruising, the likes. Molly, check the body over with magic, see if there’s anything we’ve missed. Greg—you go to find what Donovan has on Wilkes. Sherlock, you and I are going to go decipher some runes.” Taking out my phone, I took a picture of Anderson’s notes, the runes on the bodies, and his copy on the papers (just in case he’d drawn one wrong), slipped my phone back in my pocket, and nodded to Sherlock and Greg. We started toward the door.  
Sherlock led the way to the Ancient Runes class after Greg departed for Sherlock’s own classroom, and I felt a sense of glowing pride for him; there wasn’t an ounce of the man I’d helped clean up in the hallway and prefect’s bathroom only earlier that hour. I was about to say so to him when he stopped us in front of a door.  
“In here,” he said, then knocked on the door. “Janine? Are you here? Head Auror Avalon Foster’s here, we need to translate some runes.”  
The head of a very beautiful woman popped out of the door. She opened it fully with a smile. “Nice to see you, Sherlock. You must be H.A. Foster.” She offered me her hand. “Janine Hawkins.”  
“Hello. I assume you’ve heard of our latest case? Yes. Well, the two students...the markings and wounds on their bodies form runes. We need your help and the help of some books to translate them.” I showed her the pictures of the bodies and Anderson’s drawings.  
Janine nodded slowly. “Yes, I think I might be able to help. Come in, come in.”  
We followed her into her classroom, the walls of which were covered in tiny white runes painted on a navy blue background. Books were stacked haphazardly around and there were two walls covered in floor-to-ceiling books. Aside from the runes on the walls, the place looked very much like my flat.  
“What runes do you need?” Janine asked, searching through her bookcases.  
“See, that’s the thing—we aren’t sure. Anderson identified them as runes but none of us have enough experience to decode them.” I showed her the pictures. “These are his notes…” I swiped. “And these are the bodies.”  
Sherlock looked the other way, pretending to study the walls with more ferocity than he had before.  
Janine winced. “This...this is quite gruesome, but...yes, yes, I think I’ll be able to help. Can I…?”  
I nodded, passing her my phone. She took it and, muttering to herself, began searching her shelves. I left her be and returned to Sherlock’s side.  
“You alright?”  
“Yes,” he assured me, but the tightness in his voice clued me in to how much of a lie that was.  
“You didn’t know what this was?” Janine asked, Sherlock walking over with my phone perched on a stack of wobbling books. She dropped them on the desk in front of us. “It’s a fairly simple rune system, but an old one. I thought you would have recognized.”  
Sherlock swallowed awkwardly. “I, uh, couldn’t look at my students’ mutilated bodies.”  
Janine choked. “These are _students?”_  
Glancing nervously at Sherlock, I nodded. “Yes, Emmitt Whittaker and Seraphina Misy. They were found earlier this afternoon by the Ravenclaw Quidditch team.”  
“Earlier this afternoon? Miss Foster—it’s evening, now!”  
True enough, I glanced out the window to find the sky was nearly dark, the sun sinking low and painting the sky in dark blues, purples, oranges, and pinks.  
“We’re running out of time,” I breathed. “I’m sure the news of the student deaths will have reached the papers by the evening edition and if not then, then by the morning one.”  
“The world will start screaming for your resignation for sure,” Sherlock said, frowning. “We have to hurry.”  
“We?”  
“I’m going to help you! These are my students, I have experience. You’re letting me help you, I don’t care what Greg says, or Mycroft says, or John says, or Molly says, or Donovan says, or Anderson says, or even what you say. I’m helping.”  
I stared at him.  
“He’s a very determined man, Sherlock Holmes,” Janine said. “I’d take him at his word.” She gestured to the books. “Now I’ll leave you to it.” She disappeared into the gloom of her classroom, leaving me and Sherlock alone.  
“Fine,” I snapped. “Take a book, look at the runes in Anderson’s notes, and get translating.” I pulled two pieces of empty parchment toward us and pulled quills from my pocket.  
“Why Anderson’s notes?” Sherlock demanded.  
“I was assuming you wouldn’t look at the bodies again.”  
Sherlock took a deep breath. I studied him carefully as he pulled the phone over to him, squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, and got to work.  
“You’re tougher than you look,” I decided. “I like you.”  
He glanced at me briefly, then back to my books. “You’d be the first.”  
But thinking of John, Molly, Greg, and Janine, I was under the impression he was quite wrong about that and underselling his value to those people by the extreme.


	11. Avalon Foster

Sherlock and I ran back into the hospital wing, panting heavily by the time we reached the bedsides Molly and Anderson now sat by.  
“It’s an ancient dialect,” I gasped, “that was used by the early wizards and witches, a form of writing from which both Mespotamian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs are derived. We’ve translated it here.” I taped my parchment above Misy’s bed, Sherlock’s above Whittakers, as that was who we’d each translated.  
“So what does it say?” Molly asked, standing to peer at the parchments.  
“The one I did for Whittaker,” Sherlock explained, “says: _Take heed and be warned, bloodshed begins anew, vengeance for all that has been taken._ Cryptic wording, but simple enough. The murderer is taking revenge.”  
“And for Misy?” Anderson asked. “Another warning?”  
“No, a time and a place. _At 9:37 on the evening of November 13, be at 726 Jenlund Avenue. Be prepared, but bring no wands and no weapons.”_  
“Jenlund Ave? That’s not a place!” Sherlock cried.  
“It is,” I corrected. “It’s a street entirely hidden by the Ministry. It’s where most of us live. I live on Jenlund Ave. 726 is a three-story club, bars and restaurants included on every floor. Balconies surround the large square dance floor in the center.” I shrugged. “It’s a place to go dance, let loose, and have fun.”  
Sherlock wrinkled his nose. “Why wasn’t I aware of this?”  
“Ministry secrets. If you don’t work for the Ministry, you don’t know. That’s all there is to it. Well, unless you have family that lives there. I live at 91E Jenlund Ave with my brother and his girlfriend, the uppermost flat in 91. The addresses on Jenlund Ave go all the way up to number 901. It has to, to accommodate so many wizards.”  
“It’s November eighth now,” Molly said. “Is there anything we should do to prepare—”  
“We’ve got something, Foster!” Donovan said, Greg holding the door open for her. “Look at this.” She showed me her phone. My eyes flicked around, but I wasn’t sure what she was showing me.  
“What are we looking at?”  
“Runes,” Greg said. “More of them. I had Donovan check for them after Anderson’s discovery. We were going to have Janine translate them, but Sally insisted that you get to look at them first.”  
I nodded. I flipped through the photos of Wilkes’s body. “Mutilated but precise cuts. Definitely runes. Good work, Greg, Sally.” I passed back the phone. “Alright. Molly, you’re good with kids. Sherlock, it’s your House students. Let’s go talk to the Quidditch team. Greg, Sally, go get this translated by Janine, see what you can find. Wait until we’re done talking to the students, though, to tell me about it unless you find it necessary that I know during the...interview. Interrogation. Questioning.” I frowned. “Whatever you want to call this.”  
We all went our separate ways again. Sherlock led us to the Ravenclaw common room, going past the Great Hall in the process. Worried and loud murmurs were audible through the door. I tried not to listen to them and quickened my pace walking by, forcing Sherlock and Molly to pick up their own paces at the same time.  
“To enter the common room, we’ll have to answer a riddle,” Sherlock explained. “It varies in difficulty, but it’s best if I work it out myself.”  
Molly and I glanced at each other but nodded. I had been a Ravenclaw—I could just as easily work the riddle out for myself as he could. But I kept my mouth shut. We followed him into the Ravenclaw tower and stopped at the door. We waited for a moment. Only Molly seemed confused—being a Hufflepuff meant she had a different way into her common room—but then the eagle knocker spoke.  
“Words to be said, words to save a life. Words to save those who are dear, or words to hurt the heart and end it all with strife. Three words of promise.”  
My eyes flicked to Sherlock, who was staring at Molly—who didn’t notice a thing—and had gone very pale. He swallowed, his lips forming words but not saying them. At last he turned back to the knocker and said, “I love you.”  
Molly’s head shot up very fast from where she’d been observing the magnificently painted floor, her eyes as wide as tea saucers. Sherlock had already regained control of himself and waved us inside as the door swung open and the eagle closed its eyes. Molly went first, her mouth still hung slightly open, and Sherlock whispered to me, “Please, not a word.”  
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I promised, something inside me breaking to hear him sound so upset saying those words. To change the subject, I said, “Do you think you can handle talking to them about Seraphina and Emmitt?”  
Sherlock hesitated for a minute before nodding. “Yes. How much are we willing to reveal to them about the case?”  
“Only what we have to, but I think it would be best to keep the messages and runes to ourselves,” I decided.  
“Or at least, more specifically, what those runes _say,”_ Molly added as we entered the common room, in which seven students—still with brooms around them and dressed in their Quidditch robes—sat around, all very pale and none looking very happy.  
I tried to keep my body loose and expression soft. The more welcoming I appeared, the better off we would be.  
Sherlock took charge. “Students, this is Head Auror Avalon Foster. I know you might all be a bit critical of her, but I have become very acquainted with her very recently—I promise you that you can trust her.” They relaxed a bit at that. I supposed that if Professor Holmes could trust me, they thought that they could, too. “Avalon, this is the Ravenclaw Quidditch team—Chasers Frederick Motts, Phillis White, and Liam Yew; Beaters Evan Smallwood and Axel White; Keeper Thomas Carrin; and Seeker Dominique Bea. Phillis is captain of the team. Thomas and Dominique are the two who reported the incident to me this afternoon.”  
I nodded. “Thank you, Sherlock.” I turned to the players. “I know this must be very hard for you, so I ask that you let me know if you can’t answer a question, if I’m being too hard on you, or if you need to stop. Alright? That goes for all of you.” They nodded. I let out a tense breath. “Alright. Can any of you describe to me how you found them?”  
Phillis nodded, timidly raising her hand. She looked very pale and Axel—her little brother, judging by last name and the familial resemblance—clung to her side. I didn’t blame them—any of them—for looking so terrified. “I found them first. I had just walked out onto the field after briefing the team on what new defense strategies we were going to try to beat Gryffindor in the next match. At first, I didn’t really notice them. I was waiting for my team and I was filled with this...nervous excitement. But when I started to walk out into the middle of the field with the others…” She shuddered and Dominique squeezed Phillis’s hand. “I recognized Seraphina first. She’s my best friend and I knew she and Emmitt were dating so I started to tease them—from the distance we were at it looked like they were trying to stargaze in the middle of the day. Seraphina loved to stargaze.  
“But she always responded to my teasing. When she didn’t, I knew something was wrong. I got closer and…” She swallowed harshly.  
“It’s alright, you don’t have to go on,” I promised her.  
Phillis shook her head. “I have to. I have to.” She took a deep, gulping breath, and said, “She was all bloody.” Sherlock’s hand, shaking, slipped into mine. I began the squeezing pattern again. “I wasn’t sure what to think of it...and I just started screaming. But I couldn’t scream for long because when I realized she was dead—when I realized that’s what all the blood meant—I just couldn’t breathe and I started to sob and I—I—” She gulped on tears, breaking down once more.  
Sherlock let go of me and stepped forward, arms open. Phillis tumbled into his arms from her chair. He squeezed her gently. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay to cry. I did, too.”  
_Oh, Merlin, he really does love them,_ I realized. _These students are practically his children._  
“Dominique, Thomas,” I started once Phillis had settled down enough and told me I could continue, “did you run immediately to Professor Holmes?”  
Thomas nodded. “Frederick told us to get help. We just started running and we ended up in Professor Holmes’s office. It was all a bit of a blur. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was running—I just kept running.”  
“That’s normal for these situations,” Molly said kindly. “You did the right thing.”  
I tapped my fingers on the notepad I had produced from my wand. “Now, I know these questions will seem harsh and unfeeling and I do not suspect any of you, as these murders are related to one we found this morning and the case I have been working on, but it’s standard procedure. Is it alright if I continue?”  
After briefly glancing between each other, they nodded.  
“Alright. Did either Seraphina or Emmitt complain to you about anyone? Was there anything...off about them or anything they talked about in the weeks leading up to this?”  
They all shook their heads, murmuring, “No” and “Not that I noticed” and “If there was anything, they never said” and the likes. But then Liam Yew frowned.  
“There is, actually,” he said. “Seraphina got a letter. There was no sender or return address or anything, but it came with her owl. When she read it, she went pale and everything and she didn’t show up to her first class that day. When she came to her second class—Ancient Runes—she looked even worse, like she’d been crying.”  
“Did she keep the letter, does anyone know?”  
Silence.  
“Please, this could be vital,” I begged. “It could help us solve not only Seraphina’s murder but the murder of all the others in the case.”  
“We watched her burn it,” Frederick sighed dismally. “We tried to get her to tell us what was in the letter, but she wouldn’t say a word. She just chucked it into the hearth and sat there, watching it burn.” His eyes turned to the hearth on the opposite side of the common room, well away from the book stacks.  
“She kept it,” Phillis said quietly. “She told everyone else she burned it. She threw in a letter her mom sent her a couple weeks ago, but she locked the letter in her trunk.”  
“Can we see that letter?”  
Phillis nodded. “She locked her trunk with a spell she created, but I know the bypass to it.”  
“We’ll need your help, Phillis,” Sherlock said quietly. “Will you open that trunk?”  
Slowly, Phillis nodded. She took us through the girls’ dormitories, leaving Molly behind with the rest of the team, and pointed to Seraphina’s trunk. “That one’s hers.” She knelt in front of it and Sherlock’s breath stopped beside me. I followed his gaze to find several pictures of Seraphina with Whittaker, a woman I assumed to be her mother, and several of her friends, including a majority of the Quidditch team.  
Behind my robes, I offered Sherlock my hand. He took it and squeezed hard. I squeezed, he squeezed, I squeezed, he squeezed. His pulse returned to normal.  
Phillis whispered a password of some sort and the trunk snapped open. Murmuring another word, she pulled a letter from a hidden compartment and passed it to us. “This is the letter.”  
“Thank you,” I said. “We’ll have to open it under the eyes of my Aurors, and likely the Minister as well, but I will be sure to let you know if it was a matter of importance. Thank you for your help.”  
Phillis nodded. “Do you have more questions for us?”  
“Just a few,” I admitted.  
But when we returned to the common room, Greg and Donovan were there, each as pale as paper. Donovan was shaking like a leaf, something I had never seen before. Sally Donovan was very rarely frightened. What had happened to them for her to be this way and for Greg to look like he’d been walked through by the Bloody Baron?  
“Avalon!” Greg leaped toward me. “Avalon, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”  
“Greg? What—?”  
His hands were trembling, the parchment in his grasp trembling worse than Donovan. “We translated it. I...I just… It’s a direct message to you, Avalon. Your name and everything…” His voice faded. He held out the parchment with a shaking hand.  
I took it with the hand Sherlock wasn’t holding. Greg noticed I wasn’t using my dominant hand, noticed Sherlock gripping my hand, and wisely kept his mouth shut. Molly’s gaze turned slightly envious. My stomach did flips but I turned the parchment over so that I could read it.  
_Avalon Foster, once again messing with things you shouldn’t. My, my, what a mistake. You should have kept your nose out of this; I’m about to take the one that matters most to you in the world._  
My ears were suddenly ringing. Sherlock read the translation, too, and turned to me, horrified.  
“Avalon…” He didn’t seem to know what else to say except my name.  
“Oh my Merlin oh my Merlin oh my Merlin.” Suddenly I was shaking as violently as Sally was. My body went numb. _The one that matters most to you._ My vision tunneled and I turned to Sherlock. My voice was a rasp: “Avery. My brother. Oh my Merlin, he’s going after my _brother!”_


	12. Sherlock Holmes

“I have to go,” Avalon gasped, looking for all the world as if she’d just been gutted. “I have to get to St. Mungo’s. I have to warn them, have to save Avery.” The hand I was still clutching was trembling. Her whole _body_ was trembling. She tried to pull away. “Avery!”  
“No, Avalon, stop!” I said, tugging her back to my side. “You can’t go. What if he’s lying in wait for you?”  
“I’ll stop him,” she rasped, pale and shaking and looking very small and delicate indeed. I didn’t blame her—her entire world had just been ripped out from under her feet.  
“You’ve seen what he does to his victims. You aren’t going to be able to handle him on your own, he’ll overpower you and kill you. Worse, he’ll _butcher_ you.”  
“I can’t leave my brother to die!”  
Oh, the agony in that faerie-light voice. Even my students wore expressions of horror and pity, but worse was Greg, Donovan, and Molly’s faces. It was clear judging from their expressions this was not something that happened often. Avalon was a woman of extreme control over herself. Yet worse still was her own face, creased in sorrow and horror and fury.  
Fury, I realized, that was pointed at _me._  
“If you must go, I’m going with you,” I insisted, only realizing I’d said when the words were out of my mouth. I decided I was crazy. “And we’re taking John.”  
“I hardly _know_ John!” She must have been crazy, too, to only be able to protest about not knowing John.  
“Well, it’s high time you go to know him, come on!” I pulled her from the common room and we started at a run.

“John! _John!_ Come on, we’ve got to help Avalon!”  
John skidded from his office only a few moments later. “What? What’s happened with Avalon? Is it the case—” He stopped. “She’s right there.”  
“Yes,” I agreed, “but her brother’s been targeted—”  
“You’re holding her hand.”  
“Comfort,” Avalon and I both said instantly.  
“Hurry up,” I urged. “The murderer has just targeted her brother, we need to warn the hospital and get there before our murderer does.”  
Running back into his office, snatching his wand from his desk, pulling his Muggle gun from his pocket, John nodded, saying, “Fill me in. What’s happened?”  
Avalon was in no state to respond, so I filled him in on all that had happened over the course of the past day.  
Was it really only a day that had gone by? It felt like several.  
“We need to Apparate,” John decided. “Anything else will take too long. We’ll get off the grounds and Apparate from outside the gates—”  
“That will still take too long,” Minerva said, her emerald robes swishing behind her as she hurried down the corridor. “Here. As Headmistress, I have a bend in the rules. You can Apparate from the Astronomy tower with my permission. Go!” She shooed us in the general direction of the Astronomy tower, Avalon too numb and terrified to do much more than nod, run, and grip my hand as if it were the only thing anchoring her to reality.  
Upon reaching the tower, I felt as though some sort of unseen blanket had been lifted from my shoulders. John took Avalon’s other hand and we all Apparated to the front office of St. Mungo’s as one. Once there, color bled back into Avalon’s cheeks and her grip tightened. She pulled me toward the desk.  
But St. Mungo’s was quiet. It appeared as though nothing was wrong. John and I exchanged a glance. If a dangerous murderer was here, the hospital would be on lockdown, would it not?  
Avalon addressed the young woman at the desk. “Evangeline, can you take us to Avery’s room? It’s an emergency—” And then she launched into an explanation of everything, so fast I didn’t know how Evangeline managed to keep up with her. Even I had a difficult time following where Avalon’s mouth was going.  
But apparently the nurse was used to this sort of thing, as she nodded and hurried us to Avalon’s brother’s room. She unlocked the door and let us in, revealing the absolute silence of the room, not a speck of dust out of place.  
“I’ll alert the rest of the hospital to stay on edge,” Evangeline promised. “We’ll set up extra wards and make sure not a soul who isn’t supposed to be here gets in or out.”  
Avalon nodded, looking determined and steely-eyed. But the moment Evangeline closed the door and her footsteps faded away, despair and confusion broke on Avalon’s face.  
“I...I don’t understand.” The brokenness in her voice made John startle. I followed her, squeezing her hand gently to remind her I was there, as she walked to her brother’s bedside. She didn’t squeeze back. “He should be here. We should have caught him.”  
“Is it possible he’s on his way?” John asked gently. “Or that it was a trick to get you away from Hogwarts?”  
Avalon didn’t seem to be able to speak. “I...it doesn’t make sense. Sherlock, it doesn’t make sense and I don’t know what to do and I…” She collapsed with a heavy thud into the chair at her brother’s bedside. “Oh, Merlin, I’ve failed again, Sherlock! I’ve messed up and I don’t know where or when or how but I did and someone else is in danger and I don’t know who because I don’t have any family _left_ besides Avery.” She was shaking now. I crouched in front of her, rubbing my thumb gently over her hand. “What do I do, Sherlock? Tell me what to do. _Please.”_  
Her eyes met mine. Startlingly, brightly grey stared back at me, watering slightly. So pale was the grey, they could have been silver. What shocked me—scared me, even, after what she had done to help me earlier today—was how desperate and defenseless and almost delicate she seemed. The woman that had held me at my most vulnerable, had stayed strong when I couldn’t—here she was now, those eyes begging for me to do the same for her as she had done for me in her brokenness.  
“Avalon, this isn’t your fault,” I whispered. “None of this can be placed only on you. Yes, mistakes were made. But we’ll go back and correct them. He outsmarted us this time, but we’ll outsmart him next time.” I squeezed her hand. “Squeeze back, Avalon. Just like you taught me. Yes...that’s it. Good. Keep squeezing.” We squeezed back and forth as I said, “Don’t you dare beat yourself up. You have done amazing things this past day—including watching me throw up and helping me clean up after.” She cracked a tiny smile at that and I couldn’t help but giggle a little bit. “We can do this, alright?”  
“You’ll help me?”  
Oh, Merlin, _why_ did I have the sudden urge to kiss her hand? “Always.”  
Slowly, she started to nod. “Then, yes, we can do this.” Oh, that urge to kiss her—and to kiss her anywhere—grew stronger. But Avalon turned to her brother. “Sherlock, this is my brother, Avery.”  
John cleared his throat from where he stood examining the ceiling. “I’ll, uh, just...ehm...go make sure those wards are getting in place, yeah?”  
“That’d be lovely, John, thank you,” I said as Avalon took her free hand to grip her brother’s hand.  
“Avery,” Avalon continued as John left, “this is Sherlock, the one I told you about. Mycroft’s little brother. He’s better than Mycroft, though, I promise. Nicer. Smarter, I think. Kinder for certain. I’ve seen him throw up, today, actually.” She smiled at me. “Would you like to say hello before I tell him about our day?”  
“Can he hear me?” I asked. She nodded, so I nodded, too, and said, “Hello, Avery. Your sister’s a lovely woman, kinder than I could possibly imagine.” _Molly…_ my brain whispered. “I’ve never met anyone like her.” _Molly._ “And if you’re her only family left, you must’ve done a damn good job raising her. She’s...intelligent and kind and sweet and, uh, I think I’ll stop rambling now.” Why was I blushing so hard?  
Avalon giggled. “So, Avery, after that would you believe we’ve only really known each other for a day? But I suppose after seeing someone care so much to the point they make themselves sick and then helping them bathe after it and giggling the whole time might make a friendship like this.” Friendship. Were we friends? Yes, I supposed we were. “And he’s helping me with the case. He and I have cracked a few more things together. Here, let me tell you about them. It started earlier today—this early afternoon, it’s about ten thirty at night now—when I was talking to you earlier, when we thought you were waking up. Greg Lestrade came in and told me two Hogwarts students had been murdered on the Quidditch field.”  
In incredible detail, Avalon explained the day to her brother, recapping the case here and there as she needed to. She spoke to him as if he were standing in front of her, awake, and answered questions he would have had that she posed as ones to herself. And as she spoke, I felt a warmth growing in my chest. As she spoke, I never let go of her hand.


	13. John Watson

By Merlin, he was in love.  
Sherlock Holmes, left starstruck by this young woman with so much incredible talent and fiery hair with color as strong as her spirit. The look on his face was one that undoubtedly meant there was something special about Avalon Foster.  
Seeing her broken and confused and in desperate need of comfort was heartbreaking, scary even—but seeing Sherlock crouch down and hold her hand and provide that comfort for her...it was breathtakingly sweet. I had never seen him so kind to another person before (except for maybe his Ravenclaw students).  
There was an intensity with the way they looked at each other, in the way they spoke, in the way they held themselves, apart and together. I could see why Mycroft had looked so uneasy when they had been speaking together—these two could just as easily make the entirety of the wizarding world bow down at their feet with a single word and a sharp gaze just as easily as they could, say, sip idly at their tea.  
But I could see the way Avalon was looking at him, too. Sherlock’s adoration of her was not unrequited. It was the way Molly looked at him, but there was something stronger about it, something that seemed to draw him into her just as much as she found herself drawn to him.  
The tension in the room had become unbearable when I excused myself to go check on the wards without much of an idea of what I was doing. Introducing Sherlock to Avalon’s brother… Even though he was in a coma, it felt very awkwardly like a girl bringing her new boyfriend home for her family to approve of. The sudden thought of Avery Foster glaring at Sherlock on a doorstep of some house flashed through my mind and I shuddered.  
When Avery met Sherlock in real life...Avalon had better be sure Avery would be able to tolerate him before bringing Sherlock home to him. Sherlock was definitely...an acquired taste.  
I scratched at the back of my head as I strolled down the hallway, trying to look like I was supposed to be there. A nurse had spotted me walking out, however, and approached me.  
“You know the Fosters?” she asked, frowning. “The Head Auror doesn’t let just anyone into that room, her brother’s situation is precarious enough.”  
I hesitated, then said, “I know her distantly. My friend...he knows her better than I do. We’re currently helping her with a case.”  
The nurse’s face darkened. “The most recent one? The one that’s lasted ten weeks?”  
I swallowed harshly. “Er, yes.”  
The woman shook her head sadly. “She’s having the worst time with it. Especially with her brother currently out like this.”  
“Yes, I would, erm, imagine,” I agreed, stumbling over words. I had almost let slip we believed Avery was being targeted by the murderer, but I wasn’t sure if the reason for the wards had been specified to the whole hospital yet, so I kept my mouth shut. There was no need to cause unnecessary panic.  
“Do the whole world a favor, sir,” the nurse began. “Help Avalon Foster and her boyfriend—that friend of yours—solve this murder before the whole of the wizarding community is dead.”  
I frowned. “She doesn’t have a—” Then I realized the nurse was talking about Sherlock. “He’s not her—” I stopped again. I didn’t know if they were a couple. They _had_ been holding hands earlier, even if they claimed it was only for comfort, and they certainly looked at each other as if they had been together.  
I tried to imagine them getting married and my world spun. “Oh, Merlin…”  
The nurse glanced at the watch on her wrist. “My shift’s up. I gotta go. Help them save the world, sir!” She dashed off, leaving me standing in the hallway feeling as if I’d been slapped across the face, my whole body made immobile by the idea of Sherlock being someone’s husband.


	14. Avalon Foster

We found John nursing a coffee at the hospital’s cafe. He jumped to his feet when he saw us, through the paper mug into the trash.  
“That was disgusting,” he said when he joined us.  
“I would have thought you would have known not to eat or drink hospital food, John,” Sherlock chastised, a bit of an edge back in his voice. Though he had let go of each other before leaving Avery’s room, my hand still tingled with warmth and I _almost_ reached for his hand again, but I managed to keep my hands at my sides.  
“Never mind the crappy hospital food,” I ordered. “We have to get back to Mycroft. I’m going to write up another article on the case—I don’t want any of the _Prophet_ ’s guys shredding my case into miniscule pieces of nothing.”  
“Wise,” Sherlock agreed. “Will you need help writing this article?”  
“Perhaps,” I decided after a moment of thought. I pulled my phone from my pocket as we left the hospital, sending a text that read _Back to the office, we’ve got work to do_ to Anderson, Donovan, Greg, and Molly. “I’ve pulled my team back to the Ministry. Sherlock, do you think you can handle working with your brother?”  
“If he keeps his snobby mouth shut, yes,” Sherlock decided.  
“I’ll keep him quiet,” I promised, “as long as you do the same. I can’t have the two of you pissing each other—or me—off.” I sent another text to Anderson. “I’ll have Anderson clear you to look at the other bodies, Sherlock, and you can tell me what you think. Wilkes’ body should be back at the lab by now, I should think. I’ll have Molly run some tests, we’ll see if we can bring up any more fingerprints…”  
It was a struggle to get back into this commanding state. After falling apart in front of Sherlock, I found it difficult to look him in the eye without expecting pity lingering there, even though I never found any. I wondered if that’s how he felt about me and his incident in the hallway.  
I sent Mycroft a quick text as well: _I’m bringing your brother in to help out. Behave._ It was unlikely he’d heed my text, but I could already tell Sherlock was falling into line with my instructions. It wouldn't take much to...convince Mycroft to do the same.  
“How close are you to Mycroft?” Sherlock asked abruptly. John’s eyebrows shot into his hair.  
I frowned. “Erm...I don't know? We’re on speaking terms, we’ve worked together before, but...he’s my boss. It couldn’t go further than that."  
“Would you like it to?”  
_“What?!_ No! Merlin, no!” I stared at him. “What's it matter, anyway?”  
Out of sight of Sherlock, John mouthed, _He’s jealous._  
But Sherlock only shrugged and said, “Well, I think it’s best to know just so I don’t walk in on you two getting all...cozy together.” I gagged. “You’ll be sure not to get all touchy-feely while working the case?”  
“Sherlock! We’re not like that! Mycroft is my _boss,_ nothing more!”  
“Oh,” Sherlock said. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Anyway, we should be getting to the Ministry, yes?” He increased his pace and walked further ahead of us.  
I stared at John. “What’s gotten _into_ him?” I demanded, absolutely horrified, as I stared at his retreating back. Any kindness or warm feelings toward the professor had been replaced by absolute revulsion at the thought that _he_ thought I was bedding his brother...or the other way around. Or anything romantically or sexually involved with Mycroft.  
_Ugh, he’s my boss! Worse than that, he’s Mycroft!_  
“He’s afraid you and Mycroft are friends with benefits. Well, coworkers with benefits—Mycroft doesn’t have friends,” John explained.  
“Oh, Merlin, that’s...that’s disgusting!” I cried. “Imagine that, sharing a bed with _Mycroft!”_  
John looked vaguely ill. “I’d rather not.”  
“Yes, probably a good idea,” I agreed, feeling rather sick myself. I cleared my throat. “Anyway, I’m Avalon Foster. I know we were briefly introduced, but I hardly know you as well as I do Sherlock…”  
“How you managed to know him so fast is beyond me,” John said, shaking my hand. “It’s taken me years to figure him out. I still don’t know what’s going on his head half the time.”  
I chuckled. “I don’t think I know either, exactly, but my brother’s similar. And I guess I see myself in Sherlock’s constant need for stimulation.”  
“You know about that?”  
“We talked quite a bit while I helped him wash up after vomiting all over himself, you know,” I pointed out. “Talking kept the awkwardness of what I was doing—washing a man I’d only _just met_ clean of vomit—out of my head.”  
John shook his head in wonder. “I still can’t believe he let you wash him.”  
I laughed. _“I_ can’t believe his weakness is having his hair washed and played with!”  
_“Really?”_  
_“You two!”_ Sherlock called, now nearly the whole street’s length ahead of us. _“Hurry up!”_  
Laughing, we hurried after him. By the time we’d reached him, I was pleased to realize I’d found another friend in John Watson.

Thankfully, my team was already present and waiting in the lab beside a new body—this one covered—when we arrived. Mycroft had joined them but it looked like we had interrupted another argument between the Minister and Anderson, the latter of whom was red faced with both fists clenched.  
I glared at Mycroft. “I thought I told you to behave,” I snapped. “If we want this psychopath in Azkaban, we’ve got to work together and we’ve got to be _good at it._ That means you, _Minister,_ need to leave your brother, Anderson, and myself alone.”  
Turning on my heel away from the Minister, I nodded to Anderson. He drew back the sheet over the body, revealing Sebastian Wilkes, carved up with runes in the same manner as the two students.  
_“Avalon Foster, once again messing with things you shouldn’t. My, my, what a mistake. You should have kept your nose out of this; I’m about to take the one that matters most to you in the world,”_ I murmured, glancing once more at the parchment left by Wilkes. “And the two students were also messages. Did anyone take— Ah, yes, thank you, Molly. _Take heed and be warned, bloodshed begins anew, vengeance for all that has been taken…_ And _At 9:37 on the evening of November 13, be at 726 Jenlund Avenue. Be prepared, but bring no wands and no weapons.”_  
Mycroft frowned. “It’s the morning of the ninth now, we have five days before this...rendezvous on Jenlund Ave. What can we do until then?”  
I bit my lip. “I...am not sure. Sherlock? Any ideas?”  
“I suggest we run tests on Wilkes. We write another article, like you suggested, about the three latest victims and we tell the public we have a lead. And then we do nothing.”  
_“Nothing?”_ we all chorused in shock.  
Sherlock nodded. “Nothing,” he repeated. “We wait until 9:37 on November 13 at 726 Jenlund Ave. It seems likely that our murderer will be there, yes? We catch him there.”  
“We can’t bring wands or weapons!” I protested.  
He grinned slyly. “Doesn’t mean we can’t have backup.”  
I frowned. “Okay, fine. Won’t he run the moment he realizes we’re not alone?”  
“No—he’s a genius. He has to be to come up with the runes, to get away with it for ten weeks straight. The only other person to do something like that would be Moriarty, but he’s been Obliviated. It’s not him.”  
“Are we sure?” Donovan demanded.  
Mycroft sent her a withering look. “The best Oblivators were set to the task. He won’t remember anything we don’t want him to.”  
“He won’t run,” Sherlock promised me. “He’ll want to gloat about his victory, his intelligence to have bested you thus far. Then he’ll try to kill us. That’s where backup comes in and we get him into Azkaban before day breaks on November 14.”  
“Who is this _‘we’_ you speak of, brother dear?” Mycroft asked, his voice coated in honey. It was the kind of honey meant to disguise the disgusting taste of medicine, but also the kind that rarely _did_ disguise the medicine.  
“Avalon and myself,” Sherlock replied immediately. “Avalon said 726 has a dance floor, yes? I could go for a dance, a drink. And obviously she can’t _not_ be there. _And two people alone are better than multitudes, Mycroft.”_  
“He’s right,” Greg sighed. “The less of us in the building there is the better. And I think Sherlock deserves the right to punch this guy in the face, when the time comes.”  
Mycroft scowled. But he didn’t object, likely knowing we were right.  
Sherlock turned to me. “So, let’s get writing, shall we?”  
“Yes,” I agreed. “Come on, we’ll go to my flat, just this way—”  
“Come on, John, we’ll need you!” Sherlock called as we left the lab and John came scurrying after us.


	15. Sherlock Holmes

“Welcome to my flat,” Avalon said. “It’s simple, I know. But there’s three bedrooms, you two can stay the night here, if you want. I live here with my brother and his girlfriend, but she’s been sleeping at St. Mungo’s for the past few weeks so both rooms are empty.” She cracked her knuckles, sat down at her desk, pulled parchment toward her, and picked up a quill. “So. Ready?”  
I sat on her right, John on her left. “Let’s start this.”  
We started drafting. It took us two hours to finally come up with something we all deemed sufficient and another hour to edit it. In the end, it was short and sweet (only four paragraphs long) and went something like this:

**BODIES, BREAKTHROUGHS, AND LEADS  
Avalon Foster  
Sherlock Holmes  
John Watson**

**It was only with the help of brilliant Sherlock Holmes and John Watson that I managed to come to a point in this case where we finally had a substantial breakthrough—and yet it came too late for three more unlucky victims in these attacks.  
The past three bodies—their identities not to be disclosed at this time, though two were Hogwarts students—were all engraved with meticulous wounds bearing messages to myself and my team. These messages—also not to be disclosed at this time—aligned with the reports of witnesses and it is believed now that we have a lead we can follow.  
We are now following this lead closely and believe to have the suspect apprehended before the week is out.  
As this case remains ongoing, reports will be made periodically as new details come to light. If you have any information on the case that may be useful, please contact the Aurors Department. Any witness you can provide—no matter how insubstantial that information may be in your eyes—may be crucial in the closing of this case, so please come forward and contact the Ministry immediately.**

Satisfied, Avalon Apparated back to the Ministry, had the article slotted into the morning paper, and returned to her flat promptly to crash on the couch and fall right to sleep.  
John and I had already made ourselves comfortable in the two bedrooms and I had found where hers was, so I (with John’s help) brought her to her own bedroom and tucked her into bed. I couldn’t resist dragging my fingers through her hair—just once—before I left, closing the door with a soft click behind me.  
I returned to the bedroom I’d taken—Avery’s, I deduced—and lay in silence for quite some time. Revealing that two of the bodies were Hogwarts students...the backlash we would receive would be enormous. I could only hope the wizarding world was ready for this information come morning.  
But only an hour after the morning paper went out, it became very clear that no one had been prepared for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry the past few chapters have been short, they should return to longer lengths soon!


	16. Mycroft Holmes

The Ministry was in absolute upheaval. In every department, there was someone having a screaming match with somebody else. Most people were waving around a copy of the _Daily Prophet,_ which I had yet to read. But when I returned to the lab that morning, I found everyone with sullen faces.  
Greg looked up at me. He shook his head, pushing the paper at me. “She’s done it this time.”  
“Avalon wrote another article?” I guessed.  
“Not just her,” he sighed. “Sherlock and John, too. She’s ruined her career with this.”  
Foreboding crawling in my stomach, I read the article, and had soon enough found the cause of everyone’s anger: _their identities not to be disclosed at this time, though two were Hogwarts students._  
“Oh, Avalon, what have you done?” I whispered.  
“Worse, still, she brought Sherlock and John into it,” Molly fretted, wringing her hands. “The magical community will be trying to force her resignation once they realize the true meaning of that first sentence.”  
Greg nodded. “They won’t want an Auror who can’t solve a case without the help of two professors.”  
Silence descended. I was stunned. Avalon had been such a promising young woman, aside from her sudden attachment to my brother. What in Merlin’s name had possessed her to go and throw away her career and everything she’d worked for?  
“Where is Avalon now?”  
“Right behind you,” she grumbled as the door swung open. I turned as the three of them tramped into the room.  
“What happened to you?” Anderson asked, mystified.  
“What does it _look like,_ Anderson?” Avalon snapped, her patience already worn thin. She wiped what appeared to be tomato juice from her face. Her coat was also smeared in it. Sherlock and John looked no better, their robes saturated with rotten food.  
“Okay, Avalon I get getting tomatoes and rotten stuff thrown at her. But you two? You’re just professors, how did anyone recognize you?” Donovan wondered.  
“We made the mistake of mentioning each other’s names,” Sherlock grumbled. “John may be just a regular name but how many Sherlocks do you think you’re going to pass on the street everyday?”  
“This article was—”  
“A terrible idea, yeah, I get it,” Avalon snapped. “I’ve got the tomato dripping off of me to prove it.” She went to the sink and washed off as much as she could from her face and hands, throwing her coat on the table in disgust, leaving her in a white poet shirt and black leather flare pants—the same thing she’d been wearing the day before.  
“No, a good idea,” I corrected. She stared at me like I’d lost my mind.  
“Yeah, you’d say that, you’re not the one everybody’s throwing food at or spitting your name in the dirt like it’s a bloody curse!” Furious, she returned to washing her hands, dumping much more soap than strictly necessary onto them.  
“Keeping the deaths of two Hogwarts students out of the public eye for much longer would have been a mistake. The public would think you were trying to hide it from them to make yourself look better. The sooner they know about it, the better it is. They’ll quiet down soon enough.”  
“Mycroft, I’ve done nothing but prove Skeeter right. In that article of hers, she claimed I could be killing students—and now two students turn up dead.”  
Molly bit her lip. “You told them about a lead, they can’t possibly think—”  
“They can and they will,” Avalon said bitterly. “That’s always how it happens.”  
Sherlock wiped off his hands, then put one on Avalon’s shoulder. She jumped in surprise. “Avalon, Skeeter also wrote that you could be killing _me_ at Hogwarts. Yet there I was, writing that article with you. If the public is really that stupid—”  
“Of course they’re that stupid, brother dear, it’s the general public,” I reminded him.  
He glared at me. “Not helping, Mycroft.” He turned back to Avalon. “The point is, we have evidence to prove them wrong.”  
“But do we, though?” Anderson mused.  
Everyone turned to him with looks of disbelief on their faces. Avalon finally shut the water off.  
“You went to St. Mungo’s, thinking your brother had been attacked or was going to be attacked. But Sherlock and John went with you. It could be reasoned you went to go finish off your brother but because they went with you, you couldn’t.”  
Stunned silence.  
“Oh, Merlin, you do have a brain,” I said in wonder.  
“See?” Avalon had ignored me. “Anderson’s right. That’s _exactly_ what they’re going to think.”  
“No,” Sherlock interrupted, his voice firm but a note of desperation creeping in. “I was there, I _saw you_ break down and I saw you talking to him—Merlin’s beard, _I_ talked to him! There is no way the woman I saw at her brother’s bedside was going to kill him.”  
“You might know that, but the people don’t.”  
“Camera footage would correct that!”  
“There are no cameras in St. Mungo’s!”  
Anderson cleared his throat. “All the more reason people would believe she’d kill him inside his room in the hospital.”  
Avalon waved her hand in Anderson’s general direction. “Precisely.”  
“Alright, fine, the public thinks you’re a murderer for a few days,” Sherlock snapped. “We’ll catch this bastard at Jenlund Avenue and then prove them wrong. It’s not like you can go to Azkaban, they don’t have enough evidence to incriminate you.”  
“Oh, yeah, right, so what am I supposed to do for _four days_ while I’m thought to be the murderer?” Avalon demanded, sarcasm dripping from her voice and posture. “Nothing?”  
“Not nothing,” Sherlock said, pulling an envelope from his robe pocket. “We still have Seraphina’s letter to decipher.”


	17. Avalon Foster

My office in the Ministry building was quiet and boring and quite unused. I preferred the company of my Aurors and generally used an empty desk in their company. Laughter and chatter usually filled the air, but as there was no one there, it was just as silent as my office.  
“So you think we’ll need to decipher it,” I said to Sherlock who sat beside me. We stared at the letter on the desk.  
“Our murderer seems to like runes,” he said, nodding. “It only makes sense that this would be another message in runes.”  
“You think it’s from the murderer?”  
“Without a doubt,” Sherlock murmured, scooting forward in his chair and pulling the letter toward him. I peered over from his right and watched him remove the letter from its envelope and flick it open.  
As Sherlock had predicted, runes covered the top half of the letter. The bottom half, however, was different—strings tied into knots at random had been glued onto the paper. After a brief moment of study, I groaned.  
“What? Do you recognize it? The runes are different than the ones we translated before—”  
“No, not the runes, the _string!_ It’s quipu, the same writing the Incas used. Each knot represents a number.” I shook my head. “It’s puzzled Muggles since it was found. Even wizards have had trouble with it.”  
“A number? So you mean if we were able to learn quipu and translate the numbers, it might be meaningful?” Sherlock shrugged, pulled parchment and a laptop toward him, then gave me a grin. “We’d better get to work then, eh?”  
It took me a moment to recover from the flood of warmth in my chest upon seeing that smile. But at last I managed a nod. “Yes, I suppose we must.”

It took us two days to learn the very basics of quipu. It took us the entirety of the third day to translate the quipu in the letter:

_2 / 12 / 6 / 7 / 12 / 12 / 16 / 19 / 18 / 14 / 8 / 12 / 13 / 12 / 4 / 2 / 12 / 6 / 7 / 26 / 16 / 22 / 14 / 22_

But at the end of the day, we’d discovered only a string of meaningless numbers.  
Exhausted, caffeinated, and brain fried, we sat back in our chairs staring resentfully at the line of numbers we’d found. I’d kicked my feet up onto the table, but Sherlock had definitely won in terms of the weirdest position—his back was on the seat of his chair, his legs spread slightly underneath my desk to keep himself upright. He’d put his hands up in what I had teased him was his ‘prayer position’. He hadn’t found it amusing.  
“All that work,” I sighed, “for nothing.”  
“Not nothing, at least we know quipu now,” Sherlock mumbled, his eyes closed.  
I gave him a funny look. “How is that ever going to be useful?”  
“I dunno, passing love notes?”  
“When it’s just us that knows it, how is that going to work?”  
“Oh. Right.”  
But the idea of passing love notes in secret to _Sherlock_...now that was strangely appealing. Love notes existing meant that the two of us were—  
My stomach seized up. _Merlin. Am I thinking what I think I’m thinking?_  
I glanced at Sherlock, who still had his eyes closed, not appearing to notice my sudden distress. Even though I knew he probably had, with the way he was so attentive to everything.  
I took the chance to look him over again. Soft curls, a thin but elegant frame, sharp cheekbones. Merlin, he was beautiful. I resisted the urge to run my hands through that hair again.  
“What is it?” he asked, his eyes still shut.  
“How did you know—?”  
Sherlock pulled those beautiful eyes open again, his gaze turning to meet mine. My pulse quickened. “I could feel your gaze on me. And now I see you are concerned. Why?”  
_Concern._ He had mistaken my gazing at him for concern. Thank Merlin. “We’re going to 726 tomorrow with absolutely no preparation. We haven’t decoded the quipu or the runes at the top. What are we supposed to do now?”  
He frowned. Oh, Merlin, he was beautiful even frowning. “I suppose we go in with what we have. A string of numbers. It could be useful...eventually.” He sat up, folded the paper, slipped it into his pocket. “Now what kind of...club would you call this? Fancy or casual or…?”  
“I’ve been three times before,” I said. “I’d say...somewhere in between. Most people wear what they want. I’ve been dressed fancy all the times I’ve gone.”  
“Wear that, I’ll dress according to you,” he decided.  
I balked at him. “The dress I’ve worn on previous occasions is a two-piece tulle evening dress!”  
He smiled lazily at me. “Color?”  
“Crimson.”  
His smirk turned into a wide grin. “I’d bet that looks good on you, but I’d prefer to see it myself.”  
I blinked. “Is this your way of trying to charm me into wearing it?”  
“Is it working?”  
“...Yes.”  
Sherlock laughed. “Wear the dress, I’ll find a tux suitable. We will be dancing, yes?”  
I nodded.  
His shoulders relaxed. “Perfect. I love dancing. Anyway, when should we get to 726?”  
“Well...if you like dancing...and you want to do it for more than ten minutes...I’d say we’ll get there for eight-thirty, but there is no way I’m wearing that dress all day here tomorrow, so we’re going to need to get back to my flat to change before then. I’ll arrange for a cab to drive us there, too, so we don’t ruin our finery, hmm?”  
Sherlock grinned. “Sounds like a plan.”  
“You sound rather excited for tomorrow night, considering that we are about to encounter and hopefully apprehend a murderous psycho.”  
He shrugged. “I get to dance. I haven’t danced since...hm. Well it’s got to be at least six months since I’ve danced with a suitable partner.”  
“You think I’ll be suitable?”  
“You have the form to be quite a good dancer.”  
I blushed. “I, uh, was an acrobat for several years. I took ballet lessons, too. If it weren’t for my job, I might still take them. I used to go for ballet every Friday evening and I was on a trapeze or dangling from a chandelier or whatnot for hours Tuesday and Wednesday. But being an Auror means no commitments.”  
“Is that why you don’t date?”  
Shocked, I gave him a sharp look. “How did you know that?”  
He shrugged. “I’ve been inside your flat. You live the simple life of someone who isn’t in love.”  
I bowed my head. “Fair enough,” I muttered, staring into my flat. “But I’m not dating not because of my job but because I hadn’t found the right person.”  
“Hadn’t?”  
“Haven’t,” I corrected, my cheeks burning. Why was it Sherlock that came to mind when I asked myself if there was a right person?  
“Oh,” Sherlock said. I decided I was imagining the disappointment in his face and voice. “Ahem. Anyway, I’ll look for a tux tomorrow morning, alright? I’ll see what I can do to make sure we match.”  
“We have to _match?”_  
Sherlock gave me a look. “We are going to a club. Or something close enough. The last thing I want is some creep coming up to you and trying to drag you away because you look good while we’re on the job. Matching outfits might signal you’re not up for grabs.”  
My heart sunk. Just because we were on the job? Just because he wanted to protect me? The latter I was grateful for, but the former...part of me wanted him to say he only wanted me to himself.  
_Snap out of it, Avalon! You have work to do!_  
“Fine, so we match. Just don’t take too long. Do you want me to send you a picture of the dress so you know what you’re supposed to be matching?”  
A flirtatious grin—the _last_ thing I ever expected to see on Sherlock’s lips—passed over his face. “Oh, no. I want to see it only when it’s on _you.”_  
I threw a pen at him. His hand wasn’t quick enough and it smacked him right in the forehead. “You flirtatious bastard!”  
He laughed.

Despite him saying he didn’t want to see the dress, I sent Sherlock a photo of a portion of the tulle skirt so he could match the color. He was gone for most of the morning—which left me plenty of time to fret about the letter, my feelings for him, dancing with him later, and capturing our murderer tonight—and had taken John with him as an assistant in choosing his outfit. They came back around eleven, Sherlock walking into the lab with a tux in hand and a grin on his face. (He refused to let me see the tux, no matter how much I tried.)  
At eight, I left for my flat and made Sherlock promise to get there in ten minutes, as Mycroft had demanded to speak to him alone.  
I stared at the dress for at least five minutes before I managed to put it on, then stared at it again in the mirror. The skirt was fitted to my legs, accentuating my hips, but layers of folded tulle made it a bit larger, making it fluffy and fun to spin in. The top half was encrusted with tiny gems of the same crimson shade in swirling patterns, the tightness of the bodice helping the appearance of my bust. The amount of skin I was showing was sure to catch some eyes. I wondered if Sherlock’s would be on me.  
I arranged my hair in a style Molly and I had always used to wear when we went dancing for a night off from work and slipped earrings on. I put on a silver and ruby bracelet and put a matching pin in my hair.  
The door of my flat clicked open. I grinned at myself in the mirror. Time to test Sherlock.  
“Avalon, I’m—”  
I stepped out of the bathroom and into his sight. Sherlock’s jaw went slack.  
“You...you look…” He swallowed hard. “You look stunning.”  
I gave the dress an experimental swish. “It’s not too much?”  
“No!” he said hurriedly—too hurriedly. “Er, I mean. No. Not at all. Very beautiful. I think we’ll match splendidly, I think.” He’d said _I think_ twice. His tongue really didn’t know what to do with itself, did it. Pleased I had earned such a reaction, I started to smile.  
“Really?”  
He nodded wordlessly. “I, uh, I will go change?” He pointed to the bathroom and I nodded. He emerged a few minutes later, collected once more. He spread his arms. “What do you think?”  
“Oh, Sherlock...you look magnificent!” The tux really did suit him well. His slim form was beyond handsome now; he was angelic. Accentuating a thin waist and broad shoulders and long legs, it gave him the appearance of a statuesque angel. Sharp cheekbones thrown into light, slightly lidded eyes, and fashionably ruffled hair completed the look. And, by Merlin, around his throat… “Is that a crimson bowtie?”  
He grinned sheepishly. “Mmhmm. Just so we would match.” Sherlock watched as my fingers went to his neck, tracing the bowtie with interest. “Enjoy it while it lasts, I hate these things.”  
I giggled, feeling like a giddy school girl about to go to prom. “I like it. Looks good on you.”  
Sherlock’s eyebrows went up. “Does it?”  
“Mmm.”  
Looking pleased at that, Sherlock drew himself up, throwing out his chest a bit. Leaning in to whisper in my ear, he whispered, “Glad you think so.”  
I somehow managed to laugh, despite how that deep baritone had made my heart stop for several beats. “Oh, yeah. With _that_ tone of voice, you’ve definitely been someone's lover.”  
Something in his eyes flickered and died. Sherlock sighed tremendously. “Let me guess—you think it's John, don't you? Just like everyone else?”  
I cocked my head sideways. “No, I’d say Molly.”  
He blinked, surprised. “You—would?”  
I nodded but offered no explanation as to how I had guessed. I assumed he would not be very pleased with me if he knew I had seen the photos on his desk.  
As we got into the cab, I said, “Fine, fine, don’t tell me if you and Molly get up to things in the night.” Sherlock choked and spluttered, a horrified look on his face, but I laughed. “I’m only teasing, Sherlock.”  
He blushed. “Oh.”  
“726 Jenlund Ave,” I told the cabbie, paying him the proper amount. Sherlock frowned at me.  
“I could've paid!” He shook a money bag that he’d tucked away into his pocket.  
“My case, my money,” I replied, patting his arm.  
Sherlock sighed but muttered a defeated, “Oh, alright.”  
I giggled. “Lighten up, have some fun—we're going dancing and we're going to _enjoy it.”_  
“Says the girl who was confused as to why I was happy about this earlier,” Sherlock teased, once again starting to smile.  
“Maybe I'm happy I get to dance with you.”  
Sherlock beamed.


	18. Sherlock Holmes

_Merlin,_ she was gorgeous. Never had a woman made my heart stop the way she did when she stepped out of the bathroom with that two-piece crimson beauty on her. Though I’d suspected what was going on between us, in this strange heart of mine...seeing that dress and feeling the way my pulse stopped then quickened...that just confirmed it.  
Standing in the bathroom, putting on my bowtie, I tried to pull myself together.  
Dancing with her tonight...that was the only thing I could think of. Where would I look? I’d be mesmerized by her but I couldn’t let her see that. If she kept her eyes on me, would I look at the floor? No, that would make me seem unsure of my footing. The ceiling? No, that’d make it too obvious I was distracted by her. The sides? Perhaps...I could be looking for our suspect.  
Steady once more, I stepped from the bathroom and spread my arms. “What do you think?”  
“Oh, Sherlock...you look magnificent!” Avalon stepped closer to me, her wide eyes scanning my form. I suddenly found I couldn’t breathe as her hand raised from her side, moving toward me. A smile quirked at her lips. “Is that a crimson bowtie?”  
My lips tugged upward in a grin without my meaning to make them. “Mmhmm. Just so we would match.” My eyes darted down to watch her slim fingers, which went to my neck and traced the crimson bowtie. I wanted to raise my hand to hers, to hold my fingers over hers; but I restrained myself. Even though my breath was sticking in my throat, I managed to speak. “Enjoy it while it lasts, I hate these things.”  
Avalon giggled, her lips pulling into a lovely little smile. “I like it. Looks good on you.” She stepped closer to me still and my breath caught in my throat. I prayed she wouldn’t notice.  
“Does it?” I had never seen myself with a bowtie on before except for a few moments ago, but my mind had been too preoccupied with my thoughts of Avalon.  
“Mmm.” Avalon’s eyes locked on mine, the silver of her eyes at great contrast with the dress and her flaming hair, which looked quite good with the dress. The odd combination of red and silvery grey only made her more appealing.  
Staring deep into her eyes, I noticed her pupils were dilated. The black of her pupils had nearly swallowed the entirety of her silver-grey irises. My pulse quickened—dilated pupils meant, among many things, attraction. Could it be possible mine were the same?  
Pleased she found me attractive—perhaps even desirable, judging from her blown pupils—I swelled with pride, not ashamed to throw out my chest a bit. Leaning in to whisper in her ear, I whispered, “Glad you think so.”  
Avalon laughed, the sound just as light as her footsteps. I was once again reminded of how she was so similar to faeries. “Oh, yeah. With _that_ tone of voice, you’ve definitely been someone's lover.”  
I felt something inside me deflate. If she thought I was taken… She wasn’t interested, was she? I was imagining all this, I was overreacting, something else had made her pupils dilate—  
I sighed tremendously. And judging from the sad little smirk on her lips— “Let me guess—you think it's John, don't you? Just like everyone else?” Oh, if for just _once_ someone would see! Now I understood why John got so hacked off when someone assumed we were together.  
Avalon cocked my head sideways, studying me. “No, I’d say Molly.”  
I blinked. “You—would?” _Oh, Merlin, she thinks I’m bedding her former co-worker. Not good._  
Avalon nodded but offered no explanation. She nodded to the door. “Come on, we’d better get going. We don’t want to be late, do we?” She grabbed a little purse from the table that matched her dress. She stared longingly at the wand on the table, then slipped her skirt up. My cheeks flaring red, I flashed my eyes away.  
“Oh, don’t freak out, I’m just tying this to my garter.”  
“You’re wearing a _garter?”_  
Avalon shrugged. “Yeah, why not? It’s useful.”  
I stared after her as she walked out the door. “I thought you said we weren’t walking—”  
“We aren’t, I already called a cab,” she promised. “Come on, Mr. Holmes. We’re going dancing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was so short, kind of a filler chapter between the last one and the next one and I really wanted to show Sherlock's POV for what happened last chapter.   
> Anyway, next few chapters should be longer and we are FINALLY getting somewhere with our murderer!


	19. Avalon Foster

726 Jenlund Avenue had been, in the past times I’d been here, a fairly quiet place, if packed full of people. Not tonight. Tonight, it was rowdy, loud, and just as busy as ever. Music blared from speakers in the main room, the sound audible even from the entrance hall.  
Nearly without my notice, Sherlock’s hand came down on my shoulder. “I’m afraid I’m going to lose you in this mess.”  
“I’d advise that you don’t, it’ll be best for us if we stick together,” I said in response, trying to keep my voice steady and low at the same time. “We’re going to need to find a place to dance where I can keep an eye on things. The uppermost balconies—”  
“No, main floor,” Sherlock interjected. “You’ll be able to see all layers from the main floor, you’ll only see the dance floor from the uppermost.”  
I took a moment to recalculate. “Yeh—yes. Yes, you’re right.” I nodded. “The main floor. Yes.”  
“You’re not used to being questioned are you?” Sherlock cocked his head sideways, a small smile slipping across his face.   
Rolling my shoulders back, I slipped my arm through his and let him lead me to the dance floor. “Not exactly. Donovan and Anderson pretty much do as they’re told. I haven’t been Head Auror long enough for anything like this, for anyone to start questioning my orders. I think...I think this”—I flicked my fingers between the two of us—“is good. I could use someone who fights against me when I’m wrong.”  
Sherlock cracked a smile, leaning down to murmur in my ear, “Are you trying to get me to become an Auror?”  
“Maybe.”  
He laughed. “As much as I wanted to become one when I was younger…” He shook his head. “I have a duty to those kids. I can’t just pick up and leave them.”  
Something squeezed tight in my chest. “Yes, I—I know that. I see how you bond with them. They matter to you.” I was silent for a moment, and in that moment the hall opened up onto the main dance floor. But I wasn’t done talking, so I guided Sherlock to the wall. “Sherlock...you said Seraphina was like a daughter to you. How, ehrm, was she…?” I trailed off. I didn’t exactly know how to phrase the question I wanted to ask so badly.  
Luckily for both of us, Sherlock seemed to know what I wanted to ask. He sighed heavily, leaning against the wall, his leg crossed over the other. “Seraphina...she...her father died when she was in her first year. I was the one who found her, upset and crying, after the letter first came, so...she told me everything. When she returned to Hogwarts after her month at home with family, I stepped in and I tried to do everything I could to be a...a father figure to her.” He swallowed hard. “She was brilliant. I did what I could to hone that intelligence into something more, to make her more than a Ravenclaw, to make her notice things, to make her a…” His voice cut off.  
“A genius,” I whispered. He nodded, rubbing idly at the back of his neck.  
“Her mother sent me a letter in the middle of the summer. She thanked me. Seraphina had been so close to her father, but now she didn’t burst into tears at the mention of his name and she got out of bed in the morning and she...she lived again.” Sherlock wiped at his eyes. “And, um, now she’s…” His voice died in his throat. I took his hand and squeezed. He squeezed, I squeezed; he squeezed, I squeezed; he squeezed, I squeezed; he squeezed, I squeezed. At last, he took a deep, shuddering breath and pasted a smile on his face. He offered me his hands. “Let’s dance, shall we? We’re going to look awkward just standing here.”  
“Hmm,” I said, smiling up at him as he took me in his arms. My body went tense and then relaxed in his hold. “Get me a good spot where I can see everything, won’t you?” I smiled sweetly at him, batting my eyelashes as he rolled his eyes.  
“You are high maintenance, Miss Foster,” he sighed.  
“Speak for yourself, Mr. Holmes,” I retorted with a laugh.   
At last, he grinned. “Avalon, Avalon, Avalon. You are a tricky one.”  
“Oh? What’s that supposed to mean?” I raised both eyebrows at him, but he only offered me a tiny smile, his lips quirking up just slightly.  
“Dance with me,” he said, starting to sway me.  
“Wasn’t that the object of this, of getting here early?”  
Sherlock cleared his throat. As his hand slipped into the small of my back, he asked, “Is this a good spot?”  
“For your hand? That all depends on the type of dancing you’re planning on—”  
He rolled his eyes, but I noticed the dilation of his pupils, the way he was still throwing his chest out, the way his eyes latched immediately back onto my own—all signs of dominance and attraction, along with the added hand on the small of my back. My breath caught in my throat.  
“For you to _see around you,_ Miss Foster,” he interjected, his eyes playful.  
“Oh! Oh, erm…” I cast my gaze around. Deciding it was an excellent place—I had sights on every level, able to see everywhere but behind me—I nodded. “Yes, this’ll do. Just be sure to turn me so that I can see around.”  
Sherlock’s grip on my waist tightened. “I was intending to without needing eyes across the room.” The songs switched and Sherlock pulled me closer to him by the waist, his eyes never leaving my face. “How exactly are we looking for this...suspect of ours? You don’t know what he looks like, how he behaves…”  
I smiled. “That’s what you’re here for. I know what Mycroft can do and I know you can do it as well.” He looked as though I had trapped him. “Go on, show me what you can do!”  
Sighing through his nose but with a smile in his eyes that told me Sherlock had been begging for this opportunity to show off, he cast his gaze around. Sherlock’s eyes landed on a young man who was busy talking up a girl who was trying to dance and not paying much attention to him. “That man over there, dark grey suit—he owns a cat, a white Persian; he lives alone with his parents, both of whom are disappointed he doesn’t have a girlfriend yet—they’re the kind of parents who are always begging for grandkids, bit like my own”—I giggled, but he kept on, a smile twitching at his lips—“so he came here tonight to pick up a girl. The girl he’s talking to right now is here with her boyfriend, who will likely beat the kid up if he doesn’t get away fast. He’s hoping to shag and he knows she’s not interested, so he’s looking around for other girls.” His voice turned feral. “And now he’s looking at you.” Sherlock’s grip tightened on my waist and he pulled me flush against his body. “And now he’s looking away.” He sounded pleased with himself.  
“Is it your goal tonight to make me appear to belong to you?” The question slipped out before I could stop it. We stared awkwardly at each other for several heartbeats—and then I gasped, “I didn’t mean it like that, I just—!”  
“Let’s get back to dancing, shall we?” Sherlock turned his eyes away from me, his cheeks nearly as red as my dress.  
“Yes, let’s do that,” I squeaked, my voice suddenly small and insignificant, embarrassment tainting my cheeks, neck, and back pink.   
It was some time before we spoke again, but Sherlock’s smile had returned and he looked much more at ease. His eyes returned to mine and I found it difficult to look away from him, but I managed to keep my eyes up in the different levels so that I might catch our suspect...though it would be by luck if _I_ saw him. Sherlock’s chances of catching him were much higher.   
Our dancing was smooth and came easily. Sherlock was likely the best partner I had ever had the fortune of dancing with.   
His eyes narrowed as he looked at the uppermost level. He turned me—deliberately, as the turn was executed a bit sloppily and randomly—and murmured in my ear, looking only like a young man in love murmuring something in his beloved’s ear, “Notice anyone suspicious up there? Right hand corner…”  
“Someone, but they’ve moved into the shadows. They are leaving very quickly. That would be the only thing I would mark as suspicious about them.”  
Sherlock sighed heavily. “Not our guy, then, he just ran into the loo after a girl.”  
I grimaced. “No, definitely not our man.”  
We both sighed in unison, smiled at each other, then returned to dancing. We didn’t speak for two more songs, but Sherlock pulled me close and frowned when another song came on.  
“Muggle music?” he guessed.  
I nodded. “Yes. The proprietor is a Muggle-born wizard. I know him well, actually. He was my brother’s best friend when we were in Ilvermorny.”  
 _“Ilvermorny?_ The _American_ school?”  
I nodded. “We went to Ilvermorny for about a year and a half when we lived with our grandparents, who had moved to America for a quiet life. But they were too old to care for us, so we ended up back here and in Hogwarts.” I chuckled. “Minerva raised us. That’s why we’re both Animagi.”  
“Avery is, too?”  
“Mmhmm.”  
“What’s his form?”  
“He takes the shape of a jaguar. Minerva was very proud to have another cat Animagi in the ‘family’ she had created, but I think she liked that I became a phoenix, too, because she’s the one who taught me how to make my transformations so dramatic.”  
“Dramatic—as in the flame and everything you showed us when Greg first introduced you to the rest of us?” Sherlock grinned and I felt a grin of my own—albeit a bit sheepish—creep across my face.  
“Dramatic like that,” I agreed. “Anyway, Lee—that’s his name—has been trying to integrate Muggle culture into wizard culture for years. Most purebloods don’t like it, but this is the best place to go for a drink and a dance around here, so they come here and ignore the Muggle stuff anyway.”  
Sherlock nodded. “Interesting. Do you know this song—?”  
I shook my head with a grimace. “As much as I support the idea of mixing cultures—wizards ought to have a better understanding of Muggles, I say—I can’t stand Muggle music. It’s just...a weird kind of different.”  
“A weird kind of different?”  
“Yes. There’s the good kind of different, the bad kind of different, and the weird kind of different.”  
“And where do I fall into that category?”  
My breath hitched. I hadn’t even realized he’d try to categorize himself according to the way I saw the world. Studying his face, I resisted the urge to put my hand to his cheek as I said, “I couldn’t place you. You’re not...you’re not any of those things. You’re just… Sherlock, you…” Words died in my throat as movement caught my eye. My voice turned into a hiss: “Look to your right, look to your right!”  
A fight had broken out between three men—the young man Sherlock had deduced earlier and two I’d never seen before. Judging from the close proximity to the girl one stood, I assumed he was the boyfriend. So who was the third man?  
Sherlock cleared his throat. “We, uhm, should get out of the way before punches start getting thrown in our general direction.” His eyes flicked from the scene back to me. “We wouldn’t want the pretty face of yours getting punched.”  
“Oh, shut up, posh boy,” I scolded, but I let him guide me to a different corner of the dance floor, farther from the bar. I trailed behind him, my eyes stuck on the point where our fingers laced together no matter how many times I tried to remind myself to look around for our suspect.  
“The farther away from alcohol we are, the better, I think,” Sherlock decided when we returned to dancing, pulling me flush against his body once more. His arm wrapped about my waist and the other hand remained laced through my own.  
I said nothing, allowing myself to get lost in his gaze, his hold. My skirt swished around my legs, twining through them, somehow never catching on the money bag strapped into my garter. For a brief moment, I wished painfully for a wand or even a Muggle dagger. Either would have been welcome protection against our murderer.  
But what would bringing a weapon have done? Would it set the suspect off and make him harder to deal with, or injure us in the process.  
Buried deep in my thoughts, I laid my head on Sherlock’s chest, only barely noticing the slight hitch in his breathing (which I only _did_ notice because his chest had done the same jump one does when having the hiccups). “Is this alright?” I asked. “My head?”  
“Y-yes, it’s fine,” he stammered. Slowly, his arm drew me closer, as close as we could be. My heart started to pound in my chest. The tattoo it beat out was rapid, quickening with hope and anticipation. I dared not think of _what_ I was anticipating might befall us that night...but it was nice to hope, even when I knew either one of us could lose our lives if we took one wrong step when confronting our suspect.

Nearly an hour came and went. Sherlock and I had loosened up a little, laughing and talking merrily as we danced and I was pleased to discover he had a humorous side to him. My giggle was just fading away when our eyes locked and held.  
That had been happening often within the past hour: we’d make eye contact, hold it, blush, and look away. But this time...this time Sherlock didn’t look away. Instead, his hand squeezed my hip and his head dipped lower so that I could see his eyes.  
I moved one hand over his back. “What is it?” My voice was breathy and I knew my face was flushed, and not just from the dancing. “Sherlock?”  
Sherlock swallowed sharply. His eyes didn’t move off of me, but his cheeks colored darker than my dress, as he said, “That dress is doing things to me.”  
All of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe. Was he really…? Somehow, I mustered up the courage to be daring. My voice still breathy but somehow a bit sultry, I asked, “Is it just the dress?”   
His pulse quickened. “No…,” he whispered, his voice just as low and airy and composed almost entirely of breath as mine was. “It’s the fact that the person who’s wearing it _is_ wearing it.”  
My back was against the brick wall, slightly uncomfortable on my bear skin. A surprisingly heavy weight was pushing down on my front, an arm over my head and the other hand resting on my hip. His legs were on either side of mine. My mouth became his territory as my eyes fluttered closed, a gust of his breath warming my skin.  
Softer than silk, warm lips pressed against my own. If I hadn’t heard Mycroft’s stories, if I hadn’t known the man before me was not a hopeless romantic, I would have assumed he was very experienced with women.  
Maybe it was because I had been hoping for this, maybe it was because we’d been dancing, maybe a million different things—but I wasn’t surprised by this. I welcomed it with a hand that rested on the back of his neck and a smile trying to creep onto the lips he had stolen.  
Sherlock pulled away from my mouth. His head remained bent over mine, but I could see the smile dancing in his eyes and twitching on his lips. Sherlock’s eyes roved my face, searching for a reaction. I smiled at him and pulled his head back down to mine.

Snogging against the wall was how we spent a majority of ten minutes. Dancing—swaying, more like—in our shadowy corner by an exit hallway, our hands explored each other’s faces, running over cheekbones, noses, foreheads, and through hair. Neither of us could wipe the smile from our face, even as we spoke.  
At last, I rested my head against his chest once more. “You’re as good a kisser as you are a dancer.”  
Sherlock chuckled. “I do have _some_ experience, you know.”  
“I know, but I never would have expected…” I looked back up, our eyes meeting again. “Anything like that.”  
Smiling, he pressed a soft kiss to my mouth, his hand once more finding its place on the small of my back. When he at last pulled away, his cheeks were burning. “We’re being watched…”  
A man in a ridiculously long trench coat that trailed behind him on the floor, an oversized hat and dark glasses stood rather conspicuously out from the rest. His jaw had dropped open in absolute shock. Clearly, he was trying to be discrete but was failing tremendously.  
I could hardly stifle my giggle. “Oh, Merlin, it’s _Greg Lestrade.”_  
 _“What?”_  
I nodded, laughing. “Kiss me again. He’ll have news to bring to your brother.”  
“I don’t want my brother to know!”  
“Too late,” I chirped. I brought my lips up to his, standing on my tiptoes to do so. He smiled into the kiss. Pleased by his reaction, I ruffled his hair, earning a squeeze to my waist. When we parted, I said, “I’ll get drinks for us, shall I?”  
“You’re up to something,” he deduced, “and it has to do with Grant.”  
“Greg,” I corrected, “but yes.”  
He grinned and leaned against the wall where he’d first snogged me. “Alright, go on.” He kissed my hand. “Not something too strong, hmm?”  
“Mmm,” I agreed in a hum and made my way to the bar, purposely jolting my shoulder into Greg on the way. He followed me, hiking up the trench coat and whipping off the glasses.  
 _“Avalon!”_ Surprise was still lingering in his voice.  
My voice started out sweet enough, innocent enough, carefree enough. “Something the matter, Greg? _Also,_ keep in mind to keep your voice down,” I reminded him in a soft hiss.  
“You...you and Sherlock…” He gestured back behind him. “He just kissed you! And you kissed him! And he kissed your hand!”  
“Oh, calm down, Greg, that’s not even the half of it,” I scolded. I ordered drinks for Sherlock and I before turning back to him. “You didn’t see him snog me against the wall earlier.”  
Greg choked on his water. “Sherlock Holmes did _what?”_  
I giggled as Lee slid me my glasses. “Thanks, Lee. How’ve you been?”  
He grinned. “Business is booming! I heard about your brother’s crash. Avery doing good?” I nodded. Lee continued, dropping his voice, “All that stuff they’re writing about you in the papers...I don’t believe a word of it, Av. You’re not that kind of person.”  
I grinned. “Thanks, Lee. I appreciate it.” I winked at him. “Now I ought to get back to my date before he gets lonely.”  
Beaming, Lee winked back and I picked up the drinks. Greg still appeared to have sticker shock over the tidbit I’d just revealed to him. But he followed me back to where Sherlock was waiting for me, his jaw working but no sound coming out.  
“How the _hell_ is Mycroft going to react?” Greg at last asked.  
“I dunno, you tell me,” I said. “You’ll be the one to tell him, you know. After I force you to leave and Sherlock to our...ourselves.” We had reached Sherlock—but Sherlock wasn’t there. In his place was a note taped to the wall.  
“What? Where’d he go? He wouldn’t’ve just picked up and left like that, not after snogging you,” Greg reasoned. He frowned. “I don’t think.” He shook off the idea. “I wonder if he caught sight of the murderer and gave chase?”  
“No, we would have seen a commotion,” I said. The possibility he’d just left me here seemed more likely, and something about that made my stomach turn. I went to the note and read the words scrawled across it: _Come find us!_  
I snatched up Greg’s arm, pushed back the sleeve, and looked at his watch.  
The glasses in my hand smashed on the floor as I dropped them. No one but Greg seemed alarmed by this.  
It was exactly 9:37.  
And Sherlock was gone.


	20. Mycroft Holmes

It was silent in the Ministry. Most workers had gone home and the Aurors we’d called back to serve as backup for Sherlock and Avalon were already rushing off into cars to get into position around 726 Jenlund Ave.  
I had just finished debriefing the Aurors with the help of Donovan, Hooper, and Anderson, the last of those there at Hooper’s insistence. I would not have stood for it if I hadn’t known it was what Avalon would insist upon.  
Greg had gone to 726 at my request. I wanted eyes on my brother and Avalon. They had no wands to defend themselves with, having heeded the suspect’s ridiculous request, but Greg could go in with his wand as a separate party and not face the consequences Avalon feared triggering by disobeying the runic orders.  
Not to mention I knew how the pair was dressed. I knew how they’d been looking at each other in regular clothes...but with the dress and the tuxedo...how would they respond to each other? I had already seen Molly Hooper practically salivating at the sight of my brother in a Muggle tux. If Avalon looked at Sherlock the same way she did normally, would she be drooling all over him, too?  
The last thing they needed was to get distracted by each other. As infuriating as Avalon could be, she was a good Auror. I did not want her to lose her job over this nutcase who thought he could best us.  
Though it appeared right at the very moment he _was_ besting us.  
Joining Hooper in the morgue once more, I looked at the body of the Gringotts banker—Sebastian Wilkes—with an upturned nose. The runes inscribed on him had once been meticulous but had since turned into a mess of bloody ribbons, the blood seeping and oozing across the skin. Hooper had already identified a spell used to force the blood from the body long after death. She suspected it had been used on Seraphina Misy as well.  
Sherlock’s reaction to her death was similar to that of Redbeard’s. Though Redbeard’s had been followed by lots of tears and Sherlock had thrown up several times because of it, the way Sherlock had descended into absolute grief was nearly exactly the same.  
I feared that, in his grief for Misy, Sherlock would latch onto Avalon, the only person who had been there to comfort him. I feared she would do something to break him in two. He had clung to me when Redbeard died. And when I went to college, he didn’t understand, and thought I left him. It had forever damaged our relationship, which had once been on far steadier ground than what we had now.  
I only had to remain in the morgue for a few moments. I accepted Hooper’s analysis, gave clearance for autopsy, and returned to my office to look the report over. I was tapping my pen on my desk when the door burst open, a disheveled Greg staring at me with utter horror in his eyes. His gaze darted to the picture of Sherlock I had put on my desk this morning. I shot to my feet and pulled on my coat, snatching up my umbrella.  
I knew what had happened before Greg even opened his mouth to tell me.


	21. Avalon Foster

Suddenly everything clicked into place.   
_I’m about to take the one that matters most to you in the world._ That was the note that made me think of Avery. But it wasn’t Avery. It was _Sherlock._  
Oh, Merlin, we’d been so _stupid!_ Snogging in public where our murderer could be watching us from anywhere in the room, paying attention to only each other. The moment I’d gone, the suspect had swept in and hustled Sherlock away. He’d won again.  
“Greg, go to Mycroft. Get back up. We need backup. Badly. And he needs to know his little brother’s been taken.” I hardly knew what I was saying. Words came out in the absence of thoughts that I could follow. But I did avoid saying Sherlock’s name. I suspected the moment I did I would break down into tears. I’d kissed him. It was my fault he was missing.  
“Alright, come on, we’ll get back to the Ministry—”  
“No, just you. I have to stay here.”  
“What’re you gonna do?”  
My gaze was mournful. “I’m going to go find him.” I didn’t give Greg any time to argue—instead I plunged back into the crowd, leaving him behind to run back to Mycroft.  
I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going. I wasn’t like the Holmes brothers. I didn’t have a damn clue about what to do, where to go, where to start. There were no clues, nothing that could give me any sign as to where they had gone except for that blasted note, which would tell me nothing about where Sherlock had been dragged off to.  
“Miss?” A hand came down on my shoulder and I jumped. I whirled to find the young man Sherlock had deduced earlier was trying to get laid tonight frowning at me. I backed up fast. “Miss, are you looking for your boyfriend?”  
Boyfriend? Oh. Sherlock. Of course he would know, he’d been watching us—watching me—it was likely he’d been glaring at Sherlock when the suspect had taken Sherlock.  
“Yes, I am. Tall, dark curly hair, sharp cheekbones—”  
“Yes, I know what he looks like, miss. Another guy came over and picked up. I think your boyfriend got drunk or something and the guy was taking him home.”  
“This man, what did he look like?” I demanded. “Where did they go?” There was nothing but sheer panic lingering in my every fiber.   
The man pointed. “They went that way and down that maintenance hall. I work in the underground tunnels—it leads to an old sewage system.”  
Relief—sweet, sharp relief—cut through me. “Thank you so much!” I dashed off, not waiting for a description of the suspect. I followed the direction he’d pointed in and found the door that read SEWAGE MAINTENANCE, yanked it open, and descended into darkness.

It was silent. Terribly silent. I had hoped I would hear voices, but the only sounds were that of dripping water as I passed the occasional leaky pipe, the scurrying of rats, my own breath, and my heels clicking on the floor. I held up my skirts, thinking of the way Sherlock’s face had lit up when he’d seen the dress. I didn’t want to ruin it.  
 _Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock._ With every beat of my heart, his name, his eyes, and his smile passed through my thoughts. I squeezed my hand into a fist. I would find him. I _would_ find him.  
My heart thrumming in my ears, I came upon a descending stairwell. Channels on either side suggested water—sewage, specifically—had once flowed through them, but the rusting and amount of dust told me it had been a long time since anything but rats had come out of those pipes. The idea was only a slight reassurance.  
In the silence, I tried to steady myself. I had no magic, no weapons—but I had wits. Sherlock had plenty of wits. Together, we could somehow come up with a plan to escape safely. Somehow.  
The tunnel opened into a large room with no other doors. Vents on the side told me enough—sewage would flow through here and here the water would get cleansed, leaving the trash behind until it was cleared away, hence the maintenance tunnel.  
At first I noticed nothing. But then I heard a soft moan of pain. My head snapped around, searching for the source—undoubtedly Sherlock. My eyes adjusted to the gloom a bit more and I saw him at last.  
It was a pitiful sight. Sherlock’s arms had been wrenched behind his back, clearly painfully, and it appeared as though his hands had been cuffed together around a cluster of pipes. His head lolled, his beautiful tux covered in filth. His pale skin wasn’t much better, covering him in black muck that made me recoil even just seeing it.  
My mouth formed his name, but I didn’t dare speak it. I saw no sign of his captor upon further investigation from the doorway, so I stepped inside, hurrying over to him. The floor was clean enough for me to decide to crouch down beside Sherlock and lift his head by his chin.  
“Merlin, Sherlock, are you okay? What happened, how did he—?”  
“Ooooooohhhh! Look who decided to _join us,_ Sherlie! If it isn’t your little girlfriend who can’t keep her nose out of other people’s business.”  
That voice. I knew that voice. It sent chills down my spine. It kept me awake at night more often than that of Jim Moriarty’s voice, taunting me about my parents’ death as he had in the moments before I’d Obliviated him.  
I stood slowly, turning and raising my head.   
“So glad you could join us, Avalon. I’ve been meaning for this to happen for a very long time.”  
Sitting on a pipe horizontal on the wall was our suspect, a wild grin on his face. Moriarty’s lackey and assassin.  
Sebastian Moran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The big reveal! MORAN! What did you think?


	22. John Watson

There was a definite sort of panic in Greg’s voice that came through his Patronus: _“John—hurry up and get to the Ministry as fast as you can. Mycroft’s organizing a team to go in as backup for Avalon and Sherlock. We have to go right away. There’s something else, but...Mycroft’ll be the one to tell you that.  
Just get to the Ministry. Fast.”_  
The Patronus faded, leaving me with a sort of breathless panic. I glanced around the room in Avalon’s place that I had moved temporarily into, grabbed my wand when I saw it, and threw on my coat. I Apparated immediately to the Ministry entrance.  
Five minutes later, I stood in Mycroft’s office. He hadn’t said a word since I’d come in—he only stared at the small framed photograph that I never remembered being there from anytime I’d been there before. Mycroft wasn’t one for personal touches.   
At last, he unfolded his hands from under his chin, looking up from the photo. I realized only then how worn out he looked: dark bags under his eyes, his face pale and gaunt, his hair unkempt, his shoulders sagging forward. He looked like he’d been dragged through Hell and back.  
“He’s gone.”  
It took a moment for the words to register. “Sorry— _who’s_ gone?”  
“Sherlock’s gone. Avalon left him for a few moments and…” He swallowed. “When she came back, he wasn’t there anymore. Captured. By the suspect. She sent Greg back to me to get help.”  
Shock paralyzed me for several moments. Then I jumped from my chair and made for the door. “Alright, we’ve got to hurry, there might be someone who saw him go—” I realized he wasn’t following me. “Mycroft! Come on, we’ve got to… Mycroft?”  
The Minister could only shake his head. He sat at his desk for a few more moments, during which I could practically _feel_ the noose that was tightening around us, around Sherlock’s life. I could only imagine the panic Avalon must have been in—she would blame herself for this.  
Mycroft stood. He pushed his chair in. He put the picture back into a draw on his desk without looking at it. He got on his coat. He picked up his umbrella. He walked out the door, joining me in the hall. He turned back, closed the office door. He locked it with wandless, wordless magic. He started down the hall.  
These were the methodical motions of a man who did them every day but was trying not to lose it all in just a single moment. The sticker shock was fading from him, the panic starting to creep in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter. Next one's long.


	23. Avalon Foster

That wild grin split wider, becoming manic. “Have you missed me?”  
“Your master said the same thing, dog.”  
“Dog? I think not, Avalon. I think the only dog here—” He leaned forward into the light. “—is _you.”_  
“Watch...your mouth,” Sherlock spat, but his voice was nothing more than a tiny gust of breath. He lifted his eyes to where Moran sat, giving me a full view of his face.  
Moran had beaten him up. He had a black eye, there was a slice down his cheekbone, the skin over his jaw busted and bloody. His nose was swollen—possibly broken, but the amount of blood dripping from somewhere in his hair down his face made it difficult to tell.  
“Do you like my artwork?” Moran asked, casually pulling a knife from his pocket, cleaning out the dirt from under his nails with it. Dirt that was undoubtedly mixed with Sherlock’s blood. Rage boiled through me—but what could I do? I was wandless and in a dress that restricted most movement.  
“I wouldn’t call that artwork,” I snarled. But there was nothing behind it. The blood on Sherlock’s face glistened as his head turned to look at me, despair clouding his pretty eyes. I went pale. “My Merlin, what did you _do to him?”_  
“He fought back, so I taught him a lesson.” Moran’s grin was absolutely feral. “And you learned your lesson, did you, Sherlock Holmes?”  
Sherlock’s head dropped back to his chest. I could see a wound at the top of his head, glistening darkly with blood. My heart dropped to my feet. Before I could stop myself, my feet were turning to him and I was crouching again, trying to see his wounds much more clearly.  
“Oh _ho!”_ I didn’t want to see the grin that accompanied that voice, so like Moriarty’s. I knew Moran did not normally speak this way—was he perhaps trying to remind me of how I had taken his boss and friend from him? “I really did guess right, going for Sherlie boy didn’t I? You care for him! How wonderful, how delightful, how predictable, how _boring!”_  
I snarled. “What. Do. You. Want. With. Him.”  
“Him? Oh, never him. This was how I could get to _you!”_  
My eyes narrowed. “I’m here. Let him go and be done with it. Kill me, torture me, break me. I don’t care. But spare him.”  
“You care for him.” Moran dropped from the pipe. “You care for him _deeply._ He _matters_ to you. I don’t see why that’s surprising—he did just snog you senseless against a wall.” He smirked. “Maybe what’s surprising is that he cares for you, too. He was always such a freak, an oddity, a psychopath.”  
“Socio...sociopath,” Sherlock corrected, his chest heaving at the effort of speaking. My arm slipped around his shoulders. I glared up at Moran.   
Moran tsked. “Whatever you call yourself. But here you are, loving this woman, this woman who rips people apart.” His eyes were cold. They weren’t like Moriarty’s, Moriarty’s that lit up with the crazy; no, Moran’s eyes were dead and cold and filled me with every sense of dread I could conjure. “Jim was a brother to me. Boss, friend, brother. You condemned him, but not me. Why?”  
“Is this all you wanted? _Answers?_ You went on a killing spree to ask me a damn question—”  
 _“ANSWER THE QUESTION!”_  
Moran’s rage had swept up like a tsunami. No warning preceded it; his voice just bellowed out of him, his eyes blazing with that terrifying rage.   
“I gave you a second chance,” I said quietly. “We believed you were operating under Moriarty’s influence. We gave you a chance to start over and fix your mistakes—”  
“You might have, but the world didn’t. You forgot that they knew _everything_ about what I had done thanks to the _Daily Prophet._ I couldn’t go anywhere, do anything. There have been so many attempts on my life by people I don’t know, people I’ve never met.” He shook his head. “Worse—you forgot one special thing. Jim was my _best friend._ You took him away from me.” From his pocket, he produced a letter.  
 _The_ letter.  
My breath caught. “We left that on my desk.”  
Moran smirked. “I broke through Hogwarts barriers. I’ve broken into Gringotts. After all the things I’ve done, you don’t think I could have broken into your office to steal a letter?”  
“That place is crawling with Aurors and Ministry officials—”  
He pulled the knife from its sheath yet again. “Shhhh. I can do anything, Avalon Foster, I thought you would have learned that.” He threw the letter at me. “The top part, the runes—that says _Translate to save him.”_ He grinned wickedly. “You don’t translate the quipu beneath and…” He pulled a gun from his pocket. I recalled his wand had been snapped when he and Moriarty were caught. He snorted. “Well...I blow what’s left of his head off.”


	24. Greg Lestrade

“We need a boundary in place, we need to keep this place closed up. No one gets in. Keep people unaware of what is happening—the place has reached its capacity, that’s why it’s closed. No one gets out of there, either, do whatever you have to to keep them inside.” I narrowed my eyes. “Anything _except_ causing more damage. Any injuries, curses, or hexes and you’ll be dealing with a sentence in Azkaban. Understood?”  
“Understood,” the Aurors under Avalon’s command—and now temporarily mine once more—echoed back.   
“Then let’s get to it,” I ordered. “Go. Now!” They scattered at my command, several Apparating and others moving in packs to 726.  
John and Mycroft, both of whom stayed at my side, were very pale. Both looked as though they were about to faint, but I knew John was hardier than that. Mycroft, however…   
“Minister, are you alright?” I asked. “You don’t have to stay here—”  
“I have to,” he breathed. “My Head Auror and my brother are in danger and I can do nothing else to protect them, I am staying, Gregory.”  
“Greg, c’mon, let us get in there, we need to go in and help. If we can just go in and find them—”  
“No,” I said sharply. “John, I know how much you want to save Sherlock, but going after them might cause problems. We could put them in more danger than they are in now and set our suspect off. The last thing we need is one of them dying because we moved too quickly.”  
“The last thing we need is one of them dying because we did nothing!”  
“No, John, he’s right,” Mycroft said. “Any wrong move could condemn both Avalon and Sherlock.”  
“Besides, we’re not doing nothing,” I promised. “I sent in a team of Aurors. They’re asking around to see if anyone has spotted them, seen them going anywhere. We’re handing out pictures and giving their descriptions. We’re looking for them, John, we’re looking.”  
John groaned, opened his mouth to protest—  
“John, I know you want to go in there and look for yourselves, but if the suspect knows Sherlock, he knows you. We can’t risk it,” I said before he could start. “Do not make me put another friend into a danger zone. Please.”  
At last, John shut his mouth.  
“Lestrade!” Donovan came running to me. “They’ve found someone who thinks they saw Sherlock and Avalon—they’ve gone down the sewage maintenance tunnel.”  
Mycroft went pale as paper. “Oh, no. You two, come on. We need to go.”  
“What, why?” I demanded, in nearly the same breath as John.   
Mycroft gulped. “Those sewers haven’t been cleaned out in three years. They’re scheduled to be washed out and fumigated in less than an hour. Unless we stall or shut off the cleaning, we have less than an hour before our own means kills them both.”  
As one, the three of us ran back to the Ministry.


	25. Sherlock Holmes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the brief (yet somehow so long) hiatus. Hopefully I should be back on schedule!

Everything hurt. My body was sore and abused from all the times I’d resisted, only to be slammed into the wall. My head was throbbing violently—not surprising, considering that I’d put up a struggle when Moran tried to force me into cuffs and chain me to the pipes and he’d smashed the butt of a Muggle gun over my head. Judging from the horror with which Avalon studied me, I was bloody all over. My hair was sticking to my scalp and warm, sticky liquid was slowly making its way down my neck in rivulets. I could already feel my collar sticking to my neck from when blood had first poured down from that hit to the head I’d taken.  
The one small mercy was that I’d passed out from the pain waiting for Avalon to find me. But though I was spared of the pain, my mind palace had become a very confusing place. In my wakefulness, the pain in my body had made it much harder to clear my mind of such ridiculousness.  
A part of me was walking empty halls, searching for ways to save myself, to stop the blood flow, to calm my rapid heartbeat, to get out of these cuffs—but the other part of me just wanted to lie down and give up. That part of me was being yelled at by Mycroft to _“Get up! Fight back, save yourself. You’re better than this, better than lying down and taking it.”_ But I couldn’t bring myself to stand up and fight back.   
Redbeard visited me in my mind palace, trotting over with his tail wagging merrily. I grinned and sat down on the ground, patting my lap for him to come over. Giving me the dog version of a grin, he did so and started to hurriedly lick me. I laughed.  
“What? What? _What?_ Why are you laughing?” Moran demanded.  
Oh, apparently I’d laughed aloud. As much as I knew I should stop, I suddenly couldn’t. I just kept laughing, a deep chuckle that sounded foreign even to me. I could hardly stop to wonder what was going on—Moran was staring at me from one eye, Redbeard was licking me and jumping all over me in excitement in the other.  
I think I wheezed out Redbeard’s name. But it wasn’t very audible amongst my laughs.  
“What’s he doing?” Moran was trembling with rage. “Foster! What’s he doing?!”  
“I...I don’t know.” Panic? Was that panic? It sounded like panic… Avalon’s arm, the one flung around my shoulders, gave me a gentle squeeze. Her other hand brushed my knee as she twisted to face me. She knelt directly in front of me and I focused on her, Redbeard fading into nothing. She pulled me from my mind palace with a single touch. “Sherlock? Tell me what’s going on.”  
Oh, she was gorgeous, wasn’t she? If I hadn’t known better, I would call her more beautiful than Aphrodite herself. That crimson dress made my stomach clench; the fiery hair spilling across her shoulders, the brightness of her silver eyes, the slight part to her lips—it all set my heart on fire.  
“Redbeard,” I whispered.   
She flinched. Ah, so Mycroft _had_ told her about my Redbeard. “It’s okay, Sherlock. Come on, come back to me. We can get a dog if you want. He won’t be Redbeard, but he’ll be your best friend.”  
I frowned. Something about that wasn’t right. “John...John is my best friend,” I realized.  
Tears glistened in Avalon’s eyes. “Oh, darling, I know. I know,” she soothed. “But I need you to come back to me, can you do that? Can you come back to the present?” Her hand rubbed my knee soothingly. I watched as her skin darkened with the mud I was covered in. “You were doing so good. I just need you to hang on, to come back to me.”  
Moran laughed, the sound wheezing. “This is good,” he laughed. “This is _very_ good!”  
Avalon’s eyes, though still glimmering with unshed tears, took on a dangerous glint. She rose, turning to Moran. Though I could no longer see her face, the unease that flickered across Moran’s face was enough of an indication that she was very terrifying.  
“Do we have a time frame to solve this...writing?” Avalon asked.  
I was in enough of my right mind to realize what she was doing. “No, Av...Avalon,” I groaned. “We can’t...can’t play his games.”  
She glanced back at me. “We don’t have a choice, Sherlock!”  
I shook my head. The movement made my head throb. “No, Avalon. You have a choice. You can leave. Save yourself. Get help to get this maniac in chains.”  
Moran howled with laughter. “Ooooh, playing courageous, now, aren’t we?! Oh, this is _delightful!”_ He snorted to himself for several moments, then continued, more composed, “He is right, though, Miss Foster. You _can_ leave, if you choose to. But your little Shewwly...he won’t live to see you fail. A mercy, really.”  
“He can’t leave,” Avalon whispered, her eyes still on me. Slowly, she began to shake her head. “Sherlock, _no._ I can’t leave you here to die!”  
“Save yourself,” I begged her, my mind clearing as she crouched once more, her shaking hand touching my cheek. “I can’t let you die. I can’t watch you die here.”  
She shook her head again, shaking more fiercely now. “No. I won’t leave you.”  
“Tick tock, tick tock,” Moran murmured.  
My hand covered hers. “Get help, Avalon. Please. If nothing else, please just get this bastard in chains. Don’t let him harm anyone else.”  
_“He’ll kill you if I leave.”_  
“Tick tock, tick tock, tick tick tick…” Moran was progressively getting louder.  
But my mind was made. I was firm in my decision. “I am willing to die to save more lives.” I tried to smile, tried to put her at ease. “If I can save you, I’ll be h-happy. Please just get help. Lock him up and get help.” I grunted as I shifted uncomfortably, my wrists starting to zing with pain.  
“Tick tick tick…”  
“Sh-sherlock,” Avalon murmured, her hand running through my hair. She bent her head to mine, her lips caressing mine, then moving up my cheekbone—until she reached my ear. She whispered, her voice no more than a faint breath, “Greg’s on his way with Mycroft, John, and my Aurors. I’m staying.”  
I started to shake my head, but she kissed me hard. I realized Moran was still watching us with eyes that seemed to catch everything.  
“Tick tick tick…”  
She hugged me around the waist, holding me close. “I’m staying, Moran.” She burrowed her head deeper into my chest. I knew—and I knew she did, too—that regardless of whether she stayed or went, we were running out of time. I was losing blood; Moran wanted this puzzle solved and translated. I had no doubts he’d kill us both if we didn’t do what he wanted. This embrace could very well be our last.  
“Oh, how lovely!” His voice had reached a perilously high octave. I flinched at the sound. “Tick tock, tick tock, tick tick tick…”  
Avalon at last whirled. _“What is the ticking for, Sebastian?”_  
A lunatic grin spread across his face. He clucked his tongue, circling her. She backed herself up against the wall, her hand falling to rest at my head. There was an incredibly rapid rise and fall of her chest; she was starting to panic visibly now. I knew Moran would use it to his advantage. I reached up and took her hand, squeezing gently. She squeezed back. I squeezed; she squeezed; I squeezed; she squeezed. At last, her chest stopped heaving.  
Moran was watching with an odd expression. His eyes roved over us. “So you’ve taught him the hand technique, have you? Moriarty told me all about that. All about your family...your brother...your mother...how she screamed when she died and how your father cried for her…” She started to tremble. “Tick tick tick, tick tick tick…”  
_“Sebastian.”_ Her voice was suddenly very firm, the quake in it gone. “Tell me what the ticking is for. If there is a bomb you’d like us to find and switch off, if when you stop we die…? You know, Moriarty made the game we played a tricky one. He changed the board all the time—but he let me know. He always told me when the rules had changed. Moriarty made the game fair, Sebastian. Play the game like a genius does, Sebastian Moran. Play the game like Moriarty.”  
Brilliant. She was brilliant. Moran’s face went through a flurry of emotions—he’d seen Moriarty work. He wanted to be a worthy opponent of her, and here she was confirming that Moriarty had been the criminal worthy of her.  
Slowly, he grinned. “Tick, tick, tick, Miss Foster. Time’s a-runnin’ out—save him before it’s too late.” He jerked his chin at Sherlock. “I know you will, won’t you. You love him. Love—always found on the losing side, eh, Sherly? Looks like that’s you today!” Glee. That was...glee in his voice, delight dancing in his eyes. My stomach turned and not just from the nausea the wound was causing.  
“What happens when it’s too late?”  
There was a bright fire, an insane fire, glowing in his eyes. He raised his weapon to my head, turning a dial. The gun—that I now realized was so much more than a gun—started to glow. _“Boom.”_


	26. John Watson

Though I didn’t have a total grasp on the situation, in a state of half not-believing, Mycroft’s panic was enough to convince me of how dire the situation was. He, not being one to show emotion, would only ever display the panic he was now when something terrible was going to happen.  
I followed him and Greg through the Ministry, pausing at his office to pick up something that Mycroft insisted would help. Then he shoved us into the elevator and brought us to the basements of the Ministry.  
The whole place was silent. Only a few people walked around now. Glancing at my watch, I realized it was well into the night—most people had already gone home. No wonder Mycroft was so impatient with us when we slowed, no wonder he was walking like Death itself was on his heels—we had to catch the maintenance workers before they all left.  
Standing in the silence and stillness of the elevator, I realized Mycroft was trembling. I glanced at Greg, who was frowning, staring at Mycroft in shock; he’d noticed it, too.  
“You can stop staring at me,” Mycroft snapped through gritted teeth. I clenched my jaw and turned my eyes to the intricate detailing of the floor, even as Greg’s eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth to protest; I stepped on his foot, giving him the slightest shake of my head.  
Though he didn’t look happy about it, Greg shut his mouth.

Stalking down the hall with a purposeful stride, Mycroft explained that the Muggle-born proprietor of the club at 726 preferred that the cleaning out only be done every so often at set dates and times, when the club would be closing, so that none of his customers would be scared off by the foul stench emitted from the sewage when it was cleaned and fumigated, something only he—as a building with a sewer maintenance tunnel—would experience.   
“726 Jenlund Ave had been the only available building for his kind of business,” Mycroft said, his eyes skipping around the hall nervously. “Lee wasn’t pleased we gave him the building, but he turned 726 into something that made the wizarding world happy, so he ended up working well with it. With the exception of when the sewers were cleaned, of course, which is why he arranged a deal with us to set up specific time frames for cleaning—” He glanced at his watch and his voice broke off. “We need to hurry.” His voice had become urgent. _“We have fifteen minutes.”_

We only made it in time by running (which Mycroft was loathe to do, but did anyway). Panting, chest heaving as we gasped for breath, we wheezed at the few remaining workers to wait. Mycroft was red-faced from embarrassment to have been caught running and the running itself; the Minister took several heartbeats to calm himself, looked at his watch, and forgot all sense of dignity.  
“The cleaning scheduled in five minutes—we need to stop it. _Now.”_  
That’s when he got a call.


	27. Avalon Foster

He was going to kill him. Moran would kill Sherlock if we didn’t solve the quipu-varient writing on the paper I pulled back from my pocket, clutching it in my hands. The paper trembled as my hands shook. I glanced at Sherlock.  
“You can still leave, Miss Foster,” Moran told me, his voice lilting and sing-song; that was the same way Moriarty’s had been when he’d told me in grotesque detail just how he’d killed my parents. My nerves steeled and mind set, I shook my head.  
“How much time do we have?”  
“Until I decide to blow his head off.”  
I kept my temper in check with a clenched fist. “Play the game, Moran. Play it like Moriarty. You tell me how much time we have to solve this writing.”  
Lazily, Moran stretched out his arm, bringing it back to him agonizingly slowly. He studied his watch, his brow creased in thought. “You have until five past midnight.”  
_“Which is how many minutes?”_ Sherlock demanded.  
Moran grinned slowly. “Clever aren’t you? You caught that fairly quickly!”  
“Tell us,” Sherlock snarled.  
“You have twenty minutes.”  
Sherlock’s eyes flicked to me. I nodded. “We’ll do it,” he said.  
The gleam in his eyes was terrifying as Moran said, “You don’t have a choice.”

My pulse was going faster than I’d ever felt it, even when I’d chased criminals through the streets, trying to keep magic out of the eyes of Muggles. The paper in my fingers wavered as I crouched beside Sherlock.  
“How are we going to do this?” I asked, my voice low; my eyes jumped to Moran as he hopped back onto a pipe, whistling and cleaning the enhanced gun. “When we were in the office, we tried numbering it and it didn’t work. Is there another form of quipu or is this something else entirely?”  
“I...I don’t know,” Sherlock panted, his chest still heaving as he fought for breath. Panicking, I moved to position him better so he could breathe.  
“C’mon, stay with me,” I breathed, “they’re on their way. Just stay alive until they get here.”   
Sherlock gulped, nodding, his breathing heavy. “But solve this first,” he gasped.  
“Yes,” I agreed, “we’ll solve this first.” I shook my head. “But how?”  
“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t...my mind palace doesn’t have anything—” But he stopped; he couldn’t speak. His eyes went big. “You said it didn’t work when we tried numbering it. Could we be translating it wrong?”  
“Letters, maybe?”  
“I—I’m not sure. Something just isn’t sitting right with me. I should _know_ this!” He bowed his head, his eyes squeezed shut. “Keep Moran busy but try to stay quiet. I...I need to think. Desperately.”  
I kissed his cheek. “Alright.” I gave him a gentle squeeze. “You can do this, love.”  
He looked back up at me. “Yes,” he breathed, but he sounded like he was trying to desperately convince himself of that. “But just in case I don’t…” He tilted his head up. “Come here.”  
I bent my head to his, letting him push his lips against mine. The kiss was sweet, a reassuring comfort in this disgusting place.  
“Would you two table the canoodling and get back to work?” Moran drawled, pausing in his cleaning to glare at us.  
I pulled my lips from Sherlock’s. I stood, glaring at Moran, edging in his direction. “Why are you so intent on having us translate this? Why not just tell us what it says for yourself?”  
He smirked. “You told me to play the game like Moriarty—here you are trying to play the game like _yourself._ You see, Miss Foster, Jim Moriarty always knew how to make the game fun. _This,_ this is how the game is fun.”  
I narrowed my eyes. “If you were always playing by Moriarty’s rules, why not let us know before? Why even make yourself apparent? Moriarty never made it clear he was behind anything. Why would you?”  
A lazy grin slipped onto his face. “Translate that message and you’ll find out.”  
I sighed. “You don’t make things easy, do you?”  
“Where’s the fun in easy?”  
Seeing the grin that was coming a lot easier to his face, pity rang through me. If he’d kept to the promise he made when we let him go, Sebastian could’ve had a normal life. He could have times where he’d smile and laugh like this all the time.  
I shook my head. “I still don’t understand why you’d chose to go back to this. When you could’ve had a life.” I glanced back at Sherlock. “Someone to...how’d you phrase it? Someone to _canoodle_ with.”  
Moran rolled his eyes. “With my lifestyle? Not a chance.”  
I rolled my own eyes in response. “If you’d just quit that lifestyle, maybe you could!”  
He snorted. “It’s not that easy, Foster. You don’t chase this life, it chases you. I couldn’t leave it, even if I wanted to. Believe me, I tried. I tried so hard.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But without Jim…” He stared hard at the floor for several wrong moments. “It would have hurt less if you’d killed him, you know. It would’ve been easier knowing he was under the ground, not somewhere out there, alive but without a damn clue I exist.”  
“He teaches at Hogwarts,” I said. “Potions. If you want—”  
“Don’t you dare give me a pardon,” Moran interrupted. “Don’t. Just don’t. I don’t want to live in a world where I don’t remember him. He gave me some of the best memories, the best times—I want to remember that.” He rubbed the back of his neck again. “If you’ve gotta Obliviate me, don’t take my memories. Not the ones of Jim.”  
I didn’t tell him what I knew what would happen—we’d already granted him a pardon, so the only thing Moran had coming for him was the rest of his life in Azkaban. Away from Moriarty.  
Moran seemed to have caught on. Suddenly, he snarled. “You! Solve that paper!”  
“Moran, please, you gave us time, we still have plenty of time—”  
“Not anymore,” he snapped. “Not for talking about Jim.” That’s when he started to count.


	28. Avalon Foster

_“Twenty-six.”_  
“Moran, please—”  
_“Twenty-five.”_  
Panic started to flush through my body. He was counting too fast and Sherlock was still trying to work, his eyes still screwed up in concentration, nowhere near finishing the quipu. I doubted I’d even bought him enough time to start.  
_“Twenty-four.”_  
I gave up on Moran, hurrying back to Sherlock. I didn’t care how much muck I got on that beautiful red dress— _twenty-three_ —now as I crouched beside Sherlock. “Come on, Sherlock—”  
 _“Twenty-two.”_  
“—you’ve gotta hurry up!”  
 _“Twenty-one. Twenty. Nineteen.”_  
“Sherlock,” I rasped.  
 _“Oh!”_ Sherlock’s eyes snapped open. I doubted he realized what he sounded like, but I did, flushing as Moran’s eyebrow raised as he rasped out an _“Eighteen.”_  
“Sherlock? Sherlock? What is it? Did you—”  
His eyes were fixed on Moran. “Twenty-six,” he rasped. “There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet. He’s counting _down_ from twenty-six.” Sherlock stared at the quipu again. “Each string is a word. Each knot...is a number that corresponds to a letter. But he’s counting down so we organized it backwards—”  
“Sherlock, oh my Merlin, you’re a genius,” I gasped  
 _“Fifteen._ If that’s not solved by the time I get done counting, I blow his head off,” Moran growled. He loaded and cocked his gun. I swallowed hard. _“Fourteen.”_  
“Sherlock, you better start going faster,” I mumbled.  
He’d squeezed his eyes shut again. He mumbled to himself: “O is twelve… S is six… T is seven…” His eyes snapped open, his mumbling done. The numbers of this quipu—the pattern was—”  
_“Twelve.”_  
“—2 / 12 / 6 / 7 / 12 / 12 / 16 / 19 / 18 / 14 / 8 / 12 / 13 / 12 / 4 / 2 / 12 / 6 / 7 / 26 / 16 / 22 / 14 / 22,” Sherlock reminded me. “The first 2—it’s Y. 12 is O. 6 is U. The first word— _you.”_  
“How do we keep track?”  
Sherlock gave me an exasperated look. “Are you a wizard or not? _Wandless magic, Avalon!”_  
Grimacing, I watched as Sherlock furrowed his brow at the paper, trying to use wandless magic without his hands. _YOU_ formed in neat lettering. “So that’s why you weren’t nervous about not needing wands.”  
“Exactly.”  
“Next letters?”  
“7—T. 12 again, two of them—so two Os. 16...is K. _Took.”_  
_YOU TOOK_ formed on the paper.  
I furrowed my brow, thinking. “19...if we’re going backward...that’s H, right?” Sherlock nodded at me.   
“Then 18—I. 14 is M. _You took him. _Next word,” he intoned. “8, 12. _So._ 13, 12, 4. _Now.”_  
“Look, the next one is you again!”  
_“Eight.”_  
On the paper was scrawled, _YOU TOOK HIM SO NOW YOU_  
“7—T again. 26 is A, 16 is...K again. 22?”  
“E,” Sherlock said. _“Take.”_  
_“Six.”_  
_YOU TOOK HIM SO NOW YOU TAKE_  
“14 and 22— _me,”_ Sherlock said. “There’s no more. We solved it!”  
_YOU TOOK HIM SO NOW YOU TAKE ME._  
Relief crashed over me. We’d solved it like Moran wanted. But then I realized what it said. I glanced up at him.  
_“Four—”_  
“‘You took him so now you take me,’” I said aloud. Moran closed his mouth, nodding. I stared at him for a moment, the pity from before resurfacing. “‘Him’ is Moriarty, isn’t it?”  
His mouth pressed into a thin line, Moran nodded. “He was my best friend. You took him from me and you took me from him by taking his memories.” His voice grew desperate. “I’ve heard of people who’ve regained their memories of loved ones when they see them again. I want to try it. I want to see Moriarty again. I want him to remember me, even if it’s only for a moment.”   
Pain lanced through my chest. Regardless of how, Sebastian and Jim had been close. We’d known separating them was a terrible idea. Mycroft had insisted, however, that they be separated so they couldn’t cause anymore harm. Separating them, it seemed, had caused more harm than good, however.  
But I forced my expression to remain neutral. No pity or sympathy leaked onto my face.  
Moran dropped to his knees, throwing the gun aside. “Please, Foster. Please. He’s my best friend, my brother—he’s all I have left. Your own brother—you’re on the brink of losing him, aren’t you? I am, too. Please let me have my brother again.”  
That struck a chord deep within me. My jaw clenched. “Shut up. You have no right—no right at all—to talk about Avery, slimeball.” I crossed the room and stooped down to pick up the gun. I trained it on Moran.  
“No,” Moran begged, his voice suddenly dry. “No, please. I need to see Moriarty. Please. One more time, please. That’s what all this was for!”  
I snarled. “You took innocent lives—so many innocent lives—just so you could see Moriarty again? You went to Hogwarts to kill two students, couldn’t you have just seen him then?”  
A sound like a choked sob came from him. He stuttered explanations, but I didn’t want to hear another word. I raised the gun, my finger on the trigger.  
_“Shut up,”_ I snarled. “I don’t want to hear another word out of you, do you hear me? Not one word, you bastard!”  
_“Stupefy!”_ A familiar voice rang out through the chamber. The spell hit Moran hard and he collapsed. I glanced up, finding Sally Donovan staring at me and the mess we were in. “Moran? It was him?”  
Exhaustion swept over me. With Moran Stunned, I could at last relax enough to realize how tired I was. I could only nod and wobble back over to Sherlock.   
“I’m chained—” Sherlock rasped. Donovan hurried over and murmured a spell to break through his bonds. The moment he was free, Sherlock slumped, sliding down further in the muck, going nearly boneless. My back slammed into the wall harder than I intended. I gasped for breath—then stopped, realizing a peculiar stench had filled the air.  
“Oh my Merlin,” I gasped. “We’re in a sewage maintenance chamber that’s getting _fumigated._ Donovan, help me get him off the floor, we’ve gotta go fast.” My words were somehow more than babble. Donovan didn’t hesitate to fling one arm under Sherlock’s and heave him up. I tried to take his other arm, but she stopped me.  
“Oh no, you get on the other side of me. You are in no position to carry him. You’re limp with exhaustion yourself.”  
“He’s been through worse,” I mumbled, moving to her other side. She eyed the wound on the side of his head.  
“Yeah, I can see that. Merlin, what did Moran _do_ to you? Oh, Anderson, thank Merlin! Get Moran. These two need to get to Molly.” As Donovan ordered, Anderson rushed from the doorway he’d just run through to Moran, hauling his weight up. Moran was unwieldy Stunned, but we couldn’t risk him resisting us if we woke him again.  
“St. Mungo’s,” Sherlock groaned, “would be a better choice.”  
“Don’t doubt Molly, she’ll get you back in proper mind quick enough,” Donovan grumbled. “Come on, you two. If you’re right, Avalon, they release the rest of the fumes in eight minutes.”  
Sherlock moaned. “I am so done with countdowns.”  
I grunted in agreement but let Donovan lead me out of the chamber.__

__

__The maintenance tunnel was so much less daunting and felt so much shorter now that Sherlock wasn’t being held by an unknown captor, now that the same captor was being dragged to the surface behind us. The bar was empty except for a few Aurors, Molly, and Lee, all of whom let out a rambunctious cheer when we appeared.  
Donovan dumped us in Molly’s lap, then rushed back to Anderson and Moran. They closed and locked the maintenance tunnel doors as Molly placed a spell on the two of us and forced Sherlock to drink something that would make him regain his senses.  
Sherlock’s eyes—clear once more—locked on me. Before I knew it, he had surged to his feet and pulled my body against his. He smashed his mouth on mine, kissing me hard. Cheers, whoops, and whistles started up again. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Molly. I broke the kiss, my heart stumbling in my chest.  
Molly approached us. She gave me a sad smile, her eyes a bit teary. “He’s all yours,” she promised me. She gave Sherlock a last kiss on the cheek and said to him, “I’m surprised you realized what love was.”  
Sherlock didn’t seem to know how to respond, so I said, “Molly—my phone, do you have my phone?”  
She passed it to me wordlessly. I dialed a number and held the phone to my ear.  
It took him several moments to pick up. I could imagine him staring at it, then shakily and slowly answering, putting it up to his ear.  
“Hel—”  
“We’re out.”  
On the other side of the line, Mycroft sobbed—actually sobbed—with relief._ _


	29. Avalon Foster

Sherlock’s head wounds required immediate medical attention, but I had a few things to do before I could go home and collapse. While he was taken to St. Mungo’s—after I extracted a promise from him to get some rest—I accepted Molly’s proffered wand. I went and stood before Moran.  
_“Rennervate,”_ I said, reversing the effects of the Stunning Spell Donovan had administered.  
Moran jerked awake. I gave him a moment to let his vision focus. When he realized I stood before him, he started to tremble. “Foster, please—”  
“Shut it,” I ordered as ropes sprang from the wand, wrapping around him and binding him in place. For added security, I clamped Muggle handcuffs on his wrists and hauled him up. I gave him to Donovan. “Make sure he’s watched at all times and can’t escape. A gag to shut him up would do no harm.” I glared at him as he thrashed and tried to babble excuses about Moriarty.  
Glaring at him, Donovan said, “It would be my pleasure.” She conjured a gag and shoved it in his mouth. And as the Muggles do, she said, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney—”  
A car pulled up as she shoved him into a carriage. The Minister, John Watson, and Greg jumped from it, in that order. Mycroft’s eyes swam with tears. He stopped in front of me and hugged me hard. I stood, frozen, and blinked. Greg smirked at me.  
“Guess you have a way to get the Holmes boys to open up,” he snickered.  
Mycroft frowned at him as he detached himself from me. “Whatever do you mean, Gregory? I have done nothing. And neither has Sher— Has Sherlock done anything?”  
I laughed. “Oh, nothing much, he’s only snogged me against a wall.”  
“Sherlock did _what?!”_ John cried, aghast. I laughed—and then laughed harder seeing Mycroft’s face, the expression he wore a cross between fear, awe, wonder, and disgust. He almost looked as though he might faint.  
I grinned at Greg. “Why don’t you tell them the story? I’ve got to go to St. Mungo’s to get checked out and then I’m going home to sleep for a day or two.”  
Seeing the expression on Mycroft’s face, Greg’s grin faded. He looked downright scared to tell Mycroft about his little brother and I. Before Greg could worm his way out of it, I ran off.

The silence of St. Mungo’s was relaxing, surprisingly. Though silence hadn’t been something I had enjoyed since before Avery’s crash, I found the lack of noise calming in here.  
His head, chest, shoulder, and leg bandaged, Sherlock slept peacefully in the room beside my brother’s. A scan had revealed so many more wounds that we’d initially thought, some under the skin. I thought of the way he’d flinched when I’d touched him as we waited for the ambulance to arrive to take him to St. Mungo’s and decided I wasn’t surprised he had internal damage.  
_“We’re out of there,” I’d breathed to him as we waited, sitting on a stone bench just outside 726, each of us holding an empty glass that had been filled with a mixture of a potion to help us heal from Molly and something from Lee we didn’t bother finding out the name of. “We’re alive.”  
“My brother’s going to kill us,” he’d murmured.  
“Does that really matter?” I had asked.  
His eyes had locked on mine. “No, it doesn’t.” Sherlock then leaned forward and pulled my head to him, kissing me sloppily. Though it was a bit wet, I hadn’t minded—and I certaintly hadn’t minded at all when his tongue swept into my mouth.  
“Look at us,” I had murmured in a break in our heated making out, “snogging on a wall, now on a stone bench…”  
Sherlock had laughed, a low and sensual sound. “Can I kiss you again?”  
“Why are you asking?”  
“Well because I—” He took a deep breath. “I want to. Kiss you, I mean. Better, this time. Less sloppy.”  
I only smiled. “I don’t mind sloppy.”  
“I can kiss better than that,” he urged.  
“Please,” I breathed, letting him kiss me again. My hand had gone to his neck, pulling him down closer to me.  
“Kissing might make you feel better, but it’s not actually going to help,” Donovan had said dryly, draping a blanket for shock over him with a smirk on her face. “This is from the medics.”  
“What—again?!” he’d cried, face turning red. “Avalon, help me hide this before Lestrade shows up and starts laughing at me.”  
“Again?” I’d echoed. “Do I want to know?”  
“Someday,” he’d replied, a curious expression on his face I decided was vague amusement, and then we’d stuffed the blanket behind a bush._  
I held his hand now, my eyes roving his face, thinking of the silken lips that had pushed against mine only hours before. Mercifully, Mycroft had not yet barged in to give me a lecture about kissing his brother and whatnot, but I didn’t doubt that conversation would come soon.  
I kissed Sherlock’s cheek. “I’m going to go visit Avery, alright? Tell him everything. I’ll try to be here when you wake up.” It was unlikely he’d wake soon—they were keeping him under as long as possible so that the shock of the incident would fade away (or something like that, I’d only been able to realize that we were alive for the first two hours after we got out).  
Avery, too, slept on. It was remarkable how at peace they both looked—I took that as a good sign; hopefully neither was having dreams of the incidents that had brought them here.  
“Hey, Avery,” I said softly. “I’m back. We caught the murderer—Sebastian Moran. Yeah, the very same we gave a second chance after Moriarty. Sherlock helped me—a lot. Except I got him into danger. So the night started out fine—it’s morning now—and Sherlock and I went to 726 and we were dancing and laughing and talking…” I smiled at the memory. “He kissed me, Avery. Sherlock kissed me. Right up against the wall. He’s a magnificent kisser, by the way. But Moran, before we knew it was him we were after, saw. He took Sherlock when I went to go get drinks with Greg, who saw us snogging, and when I came back, I found a message on the wall…”  
By the time my story was finished, my voice was hoarse. I remained silent for some time, staring at Avery. Then I sighed, “I wish you were here to tell me what to do next.”  
“You can start by going back to Sherlock,” John said from the door. I looked up, jumping. I hadn’t even realized he was there. His voice was kind as he continued, “They’re going to wake him up in a few minutes. He’d want you to be there when he does.”  
I nodded. “How, um, long were you standing there?”  
“Only a few minutes. Do you always tell your brother about what happens to you?”  
Again, I nodded. “The nurses say he can still hear me.” I glanced at him, then stood. “They think that if I tell him stories and talk to him like I used to, he’ll have an easier time waking up.”  
“The driver who hit him—what happened to them?”  
“Dead,” I said shortly. “The family keeps sending us money and care packages. I send most of it back, but Natalie has been using some of it. She used to live off of Avery’s paycheck.” I rubbed my eyes. “Merlin, I can’t even begin to think about how she must be faring.”  
“Sure you can,” John said as we walked back into Sherlock’s room. He jerked his head at the sleeping Sherlock. “Your own boyfriend is in the hospital.”  
My cheeks went red. “He’s not technically my boyfriend. We just did a lot of snogging.” I cleared my throat awkwardly. “But anyway, he’s about the wake up. He’s not in a coma like Avery is.”  
“Still, roughly the same situation,” John said as we took chairs. My fingers curled around Sherlock’s.  
“I suppose,” I said heavily. I kissed his cheek softly, brushing a few stray curls from his forehead. To think only a few hours ago I’d been running my hands through that hair as he’d danced with me, kissed me… It was odd—I felt sort of...out of it, like I was watching myself do things without controlling them, as if I was in a different body. I guessed that happened when one had a life-threatening experience like this.  
Mycroft joined us several minutes later, telling us Greg had taken Moran to the dungeon cell in the Ministry for safekeeping until a trial could be arranged. Anderson and Molly were working on a tonic to force him back into sleep he couldn’t wake from without a potion or spell to do it for him so he couldn’t cause trouble. Donovan was writing up a report and an article to go in the _Daily Prophet_ for the morning edition.  
Then he sat down with us and waited.  
Eight minutes passed before Sherlock began to stir, his fingers twitching in my hand and his eyes moving beneath his eyelids. His legs started moving beneath the covers, a soft sigh coming from him. His body stilled in the moments before he dragged himself from his slumber.  
Sherlock’s eyes flicked around to all of us. First Mycroft, then John, then me.  
With Mycroft, Sherlock’s eyes went wide and a blush started creeping over his face. His hand tightened around mine and I got the feeling he was expecting Mycroft to just drop dead at the idea that his little brother had kissed someone. When he looked at John, he broke into a massive grin that made the rest of us smile. Then he looked at me and hauled himself up, putting an arm around my neck to keep steady, and gave me a long kiss.  
Mycroft looked like he might be ill. “By Merlin, Greg wasn’t kidding.”  
I beamed. “Not at all!”  
Even though he looked as though he might faint, Mycroft clenched his jaw and shook his head wearily. “I would have thought it would have been John.”  
John choked, Sherlock snorted, and I rolled my eyes, turning to kiss Sherlock once more.

Sherlock stayed in the hospital for several days. I spent most of those days beside him, sleeping in the plastic chair by night unless I was called to the Ministry to help organize all the reports on the murders and compile evidence for the trial.  
With my name cleared, I received thanks from people in the streets who I did not know. Some apologized for the hate mail that filled my flat, most of which I hadn’t bothered opening. Natalie had thrown most of it out, anyway, which she’d told me when she came to visit Avery the day after Sherlock woke up.  
Donovan’s article had informed the wizarding world of all that had happened. MACUSA, who had first held Moran and deemed him safe to enter the public once more, was criticized heavily and an inquiry was placed on those who had been tracking Moran.  
A visit to Hogwarts proved that Moriarty still had no idea how this _Sebastian Moran_ person was and even expressed thanks to me for having caught the “cold-blooded killer”, as Moriarty phrased it.  
“Bastard,” he spat, “to kill children for no reason.”  
The reason Moran had done this had been kept from Moriarty, for now—there was a chance that it would make him remember who he was and what he had done, and the last thing we needed was a return to Moriarty. One day he would find out, but we would prolong that for the time being.  
The trial date had yet to be set—they were waiting for clearance from St. Mungo’s for Sherlock to be present. Our memories and testimonies would be used to put Moran in Azkaban.  
I almost felt bad to Sebastian. Almost. We’d taken all that had ever really mattered to him; we’d pushed him to becoming a psychopath like Moriarty before him. And though both of them had truly become psychopaths, we were treating them much differently—giving one a second chance at a normal life by wiping his memories and throwing the other in Azkaban with only his sorrows to keep him company. Their situations, of course, differed tremendously (and Moran was _already_ on his second chance), but that didn’t stop me from trying to talk Mycroft into letting me Obliviate Moran and give him a new job, maybe a new name.  
It had been decided only a few days after Moran’s capture that Moriarty was going to need a new identity, just in case Moran were to try to do something like this again. In three days, I was to return to Hogwarts and partially Obliviate him again, removing the name _James Moriarty_ (or _Jim)_ from his memories, replacing it with _Richard Brook,_ his new alias.  
But Mycroft was adamant—Sebastian would not be treated with the same kindness we’d spared to his former boss.  
Six days had passed since Sherlock had originally gone to St. Mungo’s. Internal bleeding had kept him longer than originally anticipated, but I still went for at least an hour every day. We talked, held hands, kissed...it felt normal, right, real.  
But neither of us had relaxed even slightly. We still had the trial to go through. There was always a chance that because Moran had been let go previously the jury would chose to let him go again—and after my story of how Moriarty had rigged his own jury for his own trial, Sherlock and I were wary Moran would try to do something of the same nature.  
Mycroft told us we were just paranoid—he promised us no one was going to let Moran slip through our fingers this time. When I asked why, he told me he’d done some of his own rigging to the jury.  
“Well,” he said with a chuckle as he got up from his chair, Sherlock watching him with narrowed eyes from his hospital bed and I from the chair next to Sherlock, “I’ve done some rigging of the jury on my own.” He smiled, a sight that seemed to terrify even Sherlock. He leaned in conspirtably and whispered to us, “Everyone in the jury is somehow related to one of his victims!”


	30. Sherlock Holmes

Recovery wasn’t too difficult. I found my days fairly simple but boring, making the hours Avalon and John spent with me all the more precious. Avalon liked to come in and tell me stories about her day and her childhood, slowly getting me to open up about my own past. She smiled and giggled with me, kissing me better when I said I felt awful.  
John liked to bring in smaller cases Lestrade had gotten as temporary Head Auror while Avalon recovered (which she’d already done, but Lestrade insisted she take some extra time to herself to ‘heal’ and ‘recuperate’ from her ordeal). Apparently Avalon had told him about what I’d done in the sewage chamber and he’d decided I would be useful helping to solve some of the cases and reports that came into the Auror’s Department.  
Avalon and I got “the speech” from Mycroft one day. It took up the entirety of two very awkward hours, Mycroft stuttering and coughing embarrassedly the whole time. To her credit, Avalon didn’t show much emotion beyond faint amusement as he stumbled through the talk. But once Mycroft left, her face drained of color.  
“Oh, good Merlin, he’s going to kill me now,” she muttered into her hands.   
I took her hands from her face, kissed them, kissed her lips, and said, “Not if I can help it.” I smiled at her and her lips twitched up after several moments. I put my hand on her cheek. “That’s my girl.”  
Her cheeks turned a pleasant shade of pink at that.  
Two hours later, it was John who sat by my side. Mary had come from Hogwarts earlier that morning to visit, finally getting the chance to leave the school to check up on us. Her belly was now swollen with their second child.  
“How many months, Mary?” I asked. Of course, I already knew the answer, but I needed idle chat or I was going to pass out from boredom.  
She beamed. “Five months!” She put a hand to her stomach, beaming at John.  
“You better name this one after me,” I said.  
John rolled his eyes.

I left St. Mungo’s three days later, but I wasn’t allowed to go back to Hogwarts until after the trial was over. I protested to Avalon, saying I at least wanted to comfort my students, but she reluctantly told me no.  
“Mycroft doesn’t want you to go back only to be whisked away again. He’s not going to let you go until after the trial,” she explained as we moved a few boxes of clothes for me into her brother’s room, which I would be borrowing until I could go back to Hogwarts.  
I rubbed the back of my neck, staring at a box I’d just dropped onto the bed. “I just feel like I should be there to comfort them. They just lost two friends, and the Ravenclaws are without a Head of House _and_ their classmate…” My eyes burned suddenly at the thought of Seraphina, smiling as she’d always been.  
Avalon noticed and pulled me into a hug. She sat us down on the edge of the bed and let me cry softly into her shoulder. She toyed with my hair, rubbing my back in gentle circles. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked softly after several minutes.  
“Cuddle with me,” I decided, my voice thick with tears, after several moments of thinking. Avalon dumped the box of clothes onto the floor and lay beside me where I could see her, letting me lazily trace her facial structure. I snuggled into her, closing my eyes and breathing in her scent—woodsmoke and lemon, which didn’t smell all that bad together. The former, I guessed, was from her transformations from human to phoenix and back, the latter I knew was her soap. My voice was little more than a vibration in my chest, a soft murmur, as I said, “You smell good.”  
She squeezed my arm softly. “What do I smell like?”  
I breathed in deeply again. “Woodsmoke. Lemon. My cologne—my cologne?”  
“I am cuddling with you,” she reminded me. “But since when do you use cologne? I don’t recall that you ever used it before!”  
“I used it when we went dancing and decided I liked it,” I muttered, kissing the first glimpse of bare skin I saw on her face. It happened to be right in front of and just below her ear. She mumbled something incomprehensible, her cheeks darkening briefly. She wrapped an arm around me and watched as she laced our fingers together.  
“Whatever it is, it smells good. It suits you.”  
“Good,” I murmured, kissing that spot again. She dragged her free fingers through my hair, murmuring about cologne and perfume and how she was averse to using perfume, it made her sneeze like no tomorrow—

Smashing woke me. I jerked up, smacking Avalon in the jaw. She groaned, blinking sleep from her eyes and sitting up beside me. We found Mycroft, John, Mary, and Lestrade standing in a line, Mycroft peeking at us from Lestrade’s shoulder. It had been Mary who’d dropped the mug, leaving shards of it and tea on the floor.  
The six of us stared at each other. Then Avalon, ever sensible, asked, “How did you get in my flat?”  
“You two are together?” Mary breathed.  
“How. When. And. _Why._ Are. You. In. My. Flat?” Avalon demanded, yawning between ‘my’ and ‘flat’.  
 _“You two are together?”_ Mary repeated, her voice at a higher pitch.  
“Sort of,” I mumbled, rubbing at my eyes. “What do you guys want?”  
 _“Sort of?”_ Mary echoed. “So, what, are you friends with benefits or something?”  
“What?! No, Merlin, no! I just haven’t asked her yet. Officially.” Oh, Merlin, now I felt awkward. Really awkward. And Avalon was blushing.  
“We’ve made out loads of times, though, if that makes a difference,” she said, recovering before I did. I nodded enthusiastically, then stopped when I saw Mycroft’s face. Avalon, too, noticed. “Get over it, Mycroft. Surely you’d’ve realized your little brother’s good at this sort of thing?”  
“No, what exactly is this sort of thing?” Mycroft asked. I rolled my eyes at him. The feigned ignorance was starting to bother me.  
“Getting girls?” John suggested. “I mean, you’ve got Molly, Janine, Avalon. Not to mention the—” He caught sight of Avalon’s face. “And maybe that wasn’t the wisest thing to say…”  
“Getting girls may be one thing, but what I was actually trying to say was the romantic thing,” Avalon said, sliding off the bed and straightening her hair and clothes. She yawned, stretched, and then sighed, “So what exactly are you here for?”  
“Trial date’s been set,” Mycroft said shortly.  
Avalon and I twisted our hands together as we walked to the kitchen. Mycroft looked away, flabbergasted. “And that required four of you?”  
“Well, no,” Lestrade admitted. “Mycroft came to tell you about the trial and going back to Hogwarts for now, John and Mary came to say goodbye because they’re going back to Hogwarts, and I wanted to check in on you, see if you’d be willing to take your spot back so _I_ can go back. Course, John, Sherlock, and I’ll all have to come back for the trial, but—”  
“Wait, wait, wait, we can go back to Hogwarts?” I asked.  
Mycroft threw Lestrade an exasperated look. “What Gregory is _trying_ to say is that the trial has been set for a month from now. That means you can go back to Hogwarts for about three weeks, then come back for the trial. He, John, and Mary will all be leaving today, in about five hours—Sherlock, you can go with them if you think you’re well enough and you’re not to…”—his eyes slid to where Avalon and I held hands—“occupied.” His nose twisted and I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, if Avalon takes her spot back as Head Auror, Gregory can go without worrying its been placed in bad hands—”  
“Donovan is capable enough to handle things,” Avalon interjected. Mycroft kept talking.  
“—and everything will be back to semi-normal. Molly’s staying here for now to do autopsies on the bodies once permissions from family comes in just to make sure we’ve identified their cause of death correctly, and you’ll have to come back for the trial, but otherwise…” He spread his hands. “I’m free of you.”  
I glanced at Avalon, then at John and Mary and Lestrade. As much as I wanted to teach...I wanted to stay with Avalon, maybe ask her to date me properly instead of snogging her whenever I saw fit, get to know her brother’s girlfriend, Natalie, and maybe her brother if he woke soon, help her out in the Auror Department and solve little cases—the ones John had brought me had been fun enough.  
I cursed my horrible foresight, then. If I’d just stayed on track to becoming an Auror like I’d wanted to...maybe all of this could have already happened. I’d already get to solve cases and if I was dating Avalon...I’d know her brother and Natalie and I wouldn’t have this problem.  
But then...I wouldn’t know John or Mary. Even if I already knew Lestrade from the Auror Department, it wouldn’t be the same.  
Avalon rubbed her thumb over my palm. “You don’t have to decide right this minute, Sherlock,” she said to me. “You’ve got a few hours to think about it.”  
I nodded. “I, uh...I’ve got a lot to think about, Mycroft. I’ll let you know when I’ve made up my mind. I’ll send a Patronus or...something.”  
He nodded.   
John and Mary glanced at each other, then at me. “Well, I guess we’ll see you later. Or for the trial, depending on what you choose to do,” John said. “I’ll let you know how the students are faring if you don’t show up by tomorrow morning, alright?”  
I nodded, my throat closing up. He expected me to stay with Avalon—because that’s what he would have done. He would have stayed with Mary in a situation like this because Mary was his wife. But he didn’t know how much my students meant to me, how much Seraphina and the Quidditch team had meant to me.  
But I couldn’t say much more than, “If I don’t show, tell the Quidditch team I’m so sorry.”  
John nodded.  
Mary hugged me. “You’ll do fine,” she promised me, “and the students’ll understand whatever choice you make.”  
I kissed her cheek as she hugged me. “Thank you, Mary.”  
Lestrade asked to talk to Avalon alone after the Watsons Apparated. I drifted back to Avery’s bedroom and sat there, staring at the wall blankly. When Avalon came back to me, she found me sitting with a picture of Seraphina and the Quidditch team in my hands, Seraphina smiling serenely as Phillis held up her broomstick, Axel jumping up and down ecstatically between the two girls.  
She held me, again, as I cried.

Three hours later, our bags were packed—we’d made arrangements with Mycroft and Minerva: Avalon would be going to Hogwarts and staying to comfort students and tell them about the case to be as transparent about the case as possible. She would answer any questions the students had and help them understand why the case had taken so long.  
Not to mention she would be emotional support for me.  
Avalon also explained that the time had come for Moriarty’s memory to be altered, just in case talk of Moran got his memory working again. His identity was being changed to Richard Brook, and the students would have to somehow be told this without the fact Moriarty and Moran had worked closely together slip.  
We Apparated to the gates of Hogwarts. We stared at them for a while, then clasped hands and started for them. We pushed them open with our free hands, picking our luggage up once more after we’d closed the gates behind us with a clang.  
“Ready, Professor Holmes?” Avalon asked me.  
I scowled playfully. “Oh, shut it. If you resort to calling me Professor Holmes from now on, I think I’ll eat a sock.”  
She grinned mischievously. I realized that may have not been the best thing to say. “I look forward to seeing you do that, _Professor Holmes.”_  
I gave her an annoyed look, but it gave way to a smile. Before we started walking again, I brushed a hand over her cheek. She smiled at me. That smile had the power to make me feel like the only man in the world.  
My heart the lightest it had been since my capture—since Seraphina’s death, really—I kissed her full on the mouth.


	31. Avalon Foster

It was easy to see, when we walked into the Great Hall that night, how much Sherlock’s students loved him. The Ravenclaws cheered immediately, some of them standing up and running to Sherlock, who flew his arms open wide. When they came close enough, I realized it was the Quidditch team.  
As he hugged each of them in turn, I stood off to the side, trying to remember their names in turn. Phillis, the captain and a Chaser, I remembered well, and her brother Axel; I struggled to remember the other two Chasers, but Sherlock’s cry of, “Frederick!” had me assured of one of them; the second Beater I couldn’t remember; the Seeker and Keeper’s names, though I didn’t remember which one was which, I remembered—Thomas and Dominique.  
Phillis caught sight of me and mustered a smile. She approached me carefully, then glanced at Sherlock. He nodded and she ran at me, flinging her arms around my waist.  
Surprise made my body stiff, but after a moment I managed to force myself to relax, my eyes flicking to Sherlock. He only smiled cheekily at me.  
“Thank you,” Phillis said to me, looking up. Silver glistened in a wobbly line on one cheek. I wiped the tear away. “Thank you for solving her case.”  
I smiled into her glowing face. “You’ll have to thank your professor for that, too,” I said, pointing with my chin to Sherlock. “Without him, I doubt I would have solved the case like I did.” My eyes locked on his, my lips curling up into a smile.  
One of the students must have noticed the chemistry (and unresolved tension) between Sherlock and I was thick as we smiled goofily at each other; a loud _‘Oooo!’_ went up from one of the tables and soon many others joined it. I rolled my eyes as Phillis stepped back, grinning, and took a blushing Sherlock’s hand. The Ravenclaw team cheered and clapped ridiculously. From the teachers’ table, there was a loud shout of _‘YES’_ that drew both Sherlock and I’s attention.  
Greg was laughing at Professor McGonagall, who watched us slightly open-mouthed. He grinned at us as we approached and shouted, “I bet Mycroft on what Minerva’s reaction would be! He owes me twenty Galleons!”  
John laughed, the sound more a snort than anything else.  
I raised an eyebrow at Greg. “Honestly, Greg! Is _betting_ really such a thing to be teaching your students?” Greg waved away my teasing chides, drawing a laugh from me.  
Sherlock slipped into his seat and I joined Mary beside the chair she magicked into existence for me. She snuck a grin at me. “We’re keeping you away from Sherlock to see how long it takes for him to succumb and drag you over to his side,” she whispered in my ear. I giggled; Sherlock raised an eyebrow at this, but I waved it away.  
“We’re getting acquainted,” I promised him. He smiled.  
Dinner, I discovered, was loud, rambunctious, and wholesome. Students chatted and laughed. Though the Ravenclaw table was subdued, Mary leaned over to tell me it was much better than it had been in the days—weeks, really—we’d been gone, life was returning, smiles starting to show up on a few faces.  
As it turned out, Sherlock managed to last the whole dinner, seeing the students away with the rest of the teachers, before he meandered over to my side. I leaned into the arm he wound around my waist, eyes fluttering closed. I tilted my head up, knowing he kissed me only be the feeling of his lips softly gracing my forehead.  
Minerva led me to empty rooms, which I would be commandeering for the time I was staying at Hogwarts. She explained on the way they had belonged to Professor Binns, the ghost professor, but seen as he was dead he no longer required them; the rooms had been made into “guest rooms” of a sort.  
The headmistress looked like she wanted to say something when I’d finished having my look around in the rooms. It wasn’t that difficult to figure out what she wanted to speak of.  
“Oh, go on, ask your questions about me and Sherlock,” I prompted.  
“How in Merlin’s name did you manage to get his attention? Molly’s been trying for _years_ unsuccessfully for him to even smile at her, not to mention hold her as tight as he does you!” Minerva shook her head, mystified. “And yet you show up and within, what, a week?”  
“Something like that,” I mused.  
“Well, within a week or so, he’s attached at the hip to you. Was Greg serious when he said Sherlock snogged you against the wall?” I beamed, and that turned out to be answer enough. Minerva gave a strangled cry. “Child, what has happened in the time since you were a little thing? Snogging, dancing in clubs, nearly dying—and all of that within a day! Within a few _hours!”_  
“I grew up, Mom,” I said kindly.  
Minerva shuddered. “I don’t like that. Not at all.”  
I took her hand and squeezed. “You were less alarmed when Avery got a girlfriend.”  
“I didn’t know Natalie like I know Sherlock. And I’d never expected that you and Sherlock would…” At a loss for words, Minerva shook her head once more. “Staff meetings are going to be awkward now.”  
My lips quirked upward the moment before I started to laugh.

After that first night, Sherlock and I kept our relationship strictly professional in front of the students. But I didn’t give up calling him “Professor Holmes” with a mischievous smile, which often resulted in Sherlock giving me a look.  
Catching up with each other at the end of the day, Sherlock and I spent several nights wandering through Hogsmeade on peaceful dates. (Molly had elected to stay at the Ministry, which made it easy to get away with going on these dates without feeling awkward.) Days were ticking by, however, and soon the trial was only two days away. Everyone who had been involved—John, Greg, Sherlock, and myself—received magicked orders to attend the trial; if an answer wasn’t sent, the letters screamed and followed the recipient around all day.  
Finishing up his final class of the day, Sherlock didn’t seem to be himself. Greg and I were standing in the doorway, watching him assign his students an essay to be turned in next week, while John kissed Mary goodbye, their first child, Rosie, clinging to his legs. Hissing slightly, Mary clutched her swollen belly; her only response to my raised eyebrow of concern was a smile that was more like a wince, which she quickly hid as students streamed out of Sherlock’s classroom.  
I twisted my fingers through Sherlock’s when he joined us. John gave his best friend a hug that my heart melted at, Sherlock mumbling a “Thank you.”  
Kindly yet quiet, John replied, “You don’t have to thank me, you’ll do fine.”  
“Lestrade?” Sherlock asked, breaking away from John, his trembling hand finding mine. “If I...if _we,”_ he corrected, glancing at me, “get too emotional out there on the stand...will you finish the story for us? Please?”  
“Mate, you didn’t have to ask!” Lestrade replied, shocked. “Of course we’d take over the report. I don’t know if they’ll accept it if it comes from a secondhand account, though. The Wizengamot’s tricky to contend with. Avalon and I had a case a while back—”  
“No, that’s not what he meant,” I interrupted as Sherlock made a face, his emotions fading at what I had a feeling he would call Greg’s idiocy. I also got the feeling he wasn’t pleased with the long tale Greg seemed to be about to launch into. “They’re pulling memories. It’s not like normal, though, with a pensieve. These...these memories have to be re-lived.” I let the statement hang in the air, my own nerves jumping and twisting at the thought.  
“Oh.” John looked horrified. He wasn’t alone—Mary, too, seemed distraught, a hand on her mouth. Sherlock’s face had gone solemn, his grip on my hand much harder than it should be.  
Pale and a bit drawn, Greg—who had heard from me every little detail about what had gone on with Moran, knowing the pain Sherlock had been in—looked at me, trembling. “That’s...this is why you told me what happened. The Wizengamot can’t say it’s not a firsthand account if they hear it from _your_ lips in _my_ memories.”

Quiet was always rare in the Ministry, but it descended at a ridiculous speed when the four of us arrived in the hallway leading to the morgue, where we’d meet Molly so she could also join the trial.  
Reality crashed around my shoulders—we had to testify against Sebastian Moran, me for the second time, and last time he had not been silent. Sherlock pulled me close to him as I shivered, but not from the cold. Thoughts swirled in my head, all of them not good—it was likely Sebastian would do his best to interrupt our memories to beseech the Wizengamot to free him...and last time they had.  
Usually the Minister of Magic would preside over a trial as important as this, but because Mycroft had a personal connection to the case—Sherlock and Mycroft’s own involvement in attempting to stop the fumigation and cleaning—he would be in the trial, under scrutiny just as the rest of us were.  
_“Vivamus frater,”_ Mycroft whispered to Sherlock as we headed down to Level 10 of the Ministry. _Brother_ live in Latin. I didn’t understand the significance, but it looked like Sherlock did. For the first time—and likely last—I watched as Sherlock hugged Mycroft, their brotherly camaraderie intact for the moment.  
We entered the courtroom we were directed to by Anthea, Mycroft’s assistant. Xeroxed copies of Donovan’s report in the _Daily Prophet_ lay on a table in the center as we filed in, the headline bold and still, quite unusual for the wizarding world.  
“You can’t be serious,” Greg muttered beside me. I followed his eyes and my stomach twisted at the sight of Sebastian Moran. Zinfandel wine, its stench tainting the air, had been used to placate him. But that presented an issue.  
Rage boiled in my blood. “Mycroft,” I said in low tones, trying to keep calm, “explain to me why Moran is drunk.”


	32. Sherlock Holmes

Avalon’s body was tense beside me, her muscles stiff. A muscle in her jaw feathered, her fingers twitching in my hand. Beside us, Mycroft had gone just as still, a fire in his eyes. Cold demeanor gone, rage twisted his features into a nasty snarl. Rage lined her features as Moran was shoved over to the chair in the center of the room; the man stumbled, his eyes glazed and unfocused.  
Lestrade leaned forward, his eyes meeting Avalon’s. “Call it off, Avalon. Call it off now. He’s no use drunk—”  
“Where is Philip Anderson?” Avalon demanded, furious. She’d directed the question to the Wizengamot, who we still stood staring at, instead of sitting in our proper places in the benches in the center of the courtroom.   
“The Squib was not invited,” one of the witches said coolly from just behind Tiberius Ogden, who had recently taken up the position of Chief Warlock. Short, squat, and snotty, I decided immediately I didn’t like her.  
Avalon’s feral snarl was anything but human. “That _Squib_ has been essential to this case. I demand that he is brought for the trial; he will also be brought here now with the _imbecilic guards_ who thought it was a good idea to give Moran zinfandel wine!”  
The witch started to protest, sneering, but Ogden nodded to two guards. “Find the forensic and the guards. Minister—do you know who was guarding the prisoner?”  
Mycroft nodded. “Three Aurors were on duty last I had known—Prospero Badeust, Gwydion Virisee, and Vixen Nickel.” He turned his gaze to the two wizard guards who were starting to the door, Moran having been bound in the chair. “Find them immediately or risk the same punishment I will give them...will be dealt to you. _Go!”_  
Startled and terrified—rightly so, as even I rarely saw such anger from my brother—the two guards scurried from the courtroom.  
Avalon trembled with rage. I squeezed her hand. She was too preoccupied, too furious, to respond. She pulled her hand out of mine to stalk closer to Moran. She studied him, her gaze like fire. At last she reached out and grabbed his jaw, forcing his head forward. Moran mumbled incoherently, his head lolling even in her grip. I walked closer, seeing his unfocused eyes settle on Avalon, struggling to focus on her. At last his eyes briefly cleared up. He smirked.  
“Foster. Am I dreaming or are you here to rescue me?”  
“Bastard,” she snarled. She mocked, _“Rescue you._ You deserve to die on a slab for all you’ve done.”  
I put my hand on her shoulder. “Avalon. Avalon, it’s not his fault they’ve drugged him.”  
“Drugged him?” she asked lowly, sliding her eyes to me.   
I nodded. “Can’t you smell it? I’m not sure what it is, but it’s strong. It could be something of Molly’s invention. Part of the tonic she made to keep him asleep. We’ll need to run a few tests or so to test for the drug. We need more time.”  
Avalon stared, silent, at Moran. Disgust limned every part of her face. At last, she nodded. She turned and stalked to Ogden. She met his soft gaze with her steely one. “Tiberius, we’re going to need to reschedule the trial. At least for a few hours, a day or two at most.” She glanced back at me. “Depending on what we find.”  
“What are you expecting to find?” a wizard sneered.  
I stepped to Avalon’s side. “Moran isn’t just drunk, he’s been drugged. I intend to find out by what and who.”  
The doors opened. Anderson walked in, the two guards from before shoving the three Mycroft had named. The forensic nodded to Avalon. “You requested my presence.”  
“Yes. We need a lab. Sherlock needs to run some tests on our drunk idiot here,” she said, gesturing to Moran. She narrowed her eyes at the three Aurors who had been brought from guard duty. “And these three need to answer for how and why he’s drunk. Lestrade, take them to a holding cell. Anderson, Molly—Sherlock and I need to discuss the tonic you created to placate him with you.” She turned back to the Wizengamot, sketching out a mock bow. “We’ll send a message immediately when we are ready for the trial to resume. Scribe—you make sure every note is taken. I want every aspect of this trial in the _Prophet_ by tomorrow morning.”   
We left in groups, Lestrade pushing the three guards away through one door. John, Avalon, and I followed Anderson and Molly out another. As we left I could hear Mycroft making a few snide remarks to Tiberius Ogden and Moran drunkenly singing a bawdy sailor’s tune.

Gooseflesh raised on my arms as I worked. Avalon quietly dispatched Donovan to go help Lestrade with the three Aurors. Her steps were soft yet still loud in the near-silent lab as she returned to my side. She leaned on the countertop. “Anything?”  
“Nothing yet of use,” I murmured. “I’ve identified something that might be the cause of his drugged system but I’ll have to test his blood to see if it matches. I’m still not sure what it is, either… It’s not like a Muggle drug but there’s nothing distinctly magical about it.”  
She slid two fingers under my chin, lifting my head. “You’ll get to it,” she promised.  
“I’m glad you’re confident in my abilities, at least,” I murmured. Her eyes tightened in a smile that did little to her lips, which met mine and left my eyes fluttering closed.   
Her fingers didn’t leave my chin, keeping me kissing her instead of returning to my work. Her other hand found mine and put it on the back of her neck; that hand found a place on my waist. A soft mewling sound slipped from my mouth and she started, both of our eyes flicking open in surprise. Her eyes crinkled and I could feel her smiling.   
My fingers drummed lightly on her neck, a gentle soothing motion against the nerves and muscles that were tense beneath my hand. I could feel her pulse—strong and steady—under my palm. I broke the kiss for a moment to whisper her name. She tugged me right back by my shirt collar (where her hand stayed this time).   
Her thumb brushed over my neck, right over my pulse as it sped up under her touch. She tilted my head up a little bit more, shifting closer to me. Heat radiated from her body. The hand on my neck dropped down, working itself under my shirt. My breath hitched at her warm touch. I shifted, quite willing to let her go as far as she wanted.  
She broke our lazy kissing to watch me as her hand settled on my stomach. I pulled her back to me, sliding my hand to her hip.  
An awkward cough.  
Avalon started, jolted back to reality. Her mouth pulled away from mine, her hands drifting back to her side, surprise widening her eyes. Pink frosted her cheeks. Lazily I turned my head in the direction of the person who had coughed, finding Molly and Anderson, the latter with his hand still raised to his mouth to make that cough. Molly’s face was a complex picture of emotion, sadness and anger forcing her lower lip into a slight tremble, shock blanking her eyes.  
I tried to stay casual, as if they hadn’t just walked in on a very heated kiss (that was so much more than a kiss and I would have been glad to see become much more) that had, unsurprisingly, sent desire straight to my groin. I was lucky that eager desire hadn’t made itself known to the general public by the time Anderson had coughed.  
“Ah, good. Molly, care to explain how you made this tonic? What’s in it, the likes?”  
Avalon drummed her fingers on my shoulder. Her cheeks were still pink as she said, “I should get down to the holding cell. Sherlock, let me know when you find anything. I’ll bring up news of who gave Moran wine in an hour or so.”  
“How can you be so sure?” I asked.  
Anderson snickered. “Miss Foster terrifies people. It only takes her about an hour to get them to crack and tell her what she wants to know.”  
Avalon rolled her eyes. “Oh, shut up, Anderson. Don’t flatter me.” Then she disappeared through the glass doors, walking with an intimidating, determined swagger to the lift.  
I turned my eyes back to Molly. “Well? The tonic?”  
She awkwardly cleared her throat. “Erm, yes. Chamomile and cherry juice were added to a mixture of turmeric and the Muggle drugs doxepin and ramelteon.” At my raised eyebrow, she explained, “It’s an odd mixture and tastes disgusting but it works well enough.”  
“How _does_ it work?” I asked.   
“Doxepin helps a variety of things—including staying asleep. Ramelteon induces sleep in the first place. I tweaked each drug just a bit to make them compatible in the tonic. Chamomile, cherry juice, and turmeric also help with sleep. Combined and with the two drugs, it creates a long-lasting burst of melatonin to keep the drinker asleep for up to four days. We had to keep giving him more of it.”  
“Is there any left, besides what I just looked at?”  
“Some. We had to make more than the original batch.”  
“It was made the same way as it was originally?”  
“Yes.”  
I narrowed my eyes at the liquid in the petri dish before me. I sifted through it with a pipet, watching the turmeric swirl at the top of the muddy reddish-brown mixture. It was thin and sticky, smelling vaguely like disgusting Muggle cough syrup.   
“I need to test his blood,” I murmured, mulling over Molly’s words. “I have a theory, but I need to prove it.”  
“Should I get Avalon?” Anderson asked.  
I waved him off. “Let her finish her job interrogating the guards. I’ll deal with this on my own. You can, however, fetch a blood sample from Moran.”  
The man nodded and left, snagging a syringe to draw blood with on the way out. I turned back to the microscope, making myself intent on my work. I was silent as I scratched a few things down on the notepaper beside me.   
The silence had become awkward with Molly staring at me from across the room, looking very much like she wanted to say something. I almost prompted her to speak, but seeing her expression—still frozen with jealousy—I decided not to.  
I jotted _forced magical compatibility between ramelteon and doxepin_ down and tapped my quill on the countertop, frowning. Something about that didn’t seem right to me—what type of magic was there to force Muggle drugs to interact in a way that would result in a good outcome for the drinker? Usually magic like that backfired. That made it possible for—  
“I’m trying to be happy for you.”  
I raised my head. I blinked at Molly. “Sorry, what?”  
“I’m trying, Sherlock, to be happy for you. You and Avalon. I know you love her and you could never love me but it— It just doesn’t make sense to me. Sherlock, how is it that you fall in love with her after knowing her for just a little while but after years of knowing me and flirting with me—how can you not _see_ me, _see_ that I love—” She broke off, her voice trailing into silence. She shook her head, her eyes squeezed shut. She tried to steady her breathing. “I guess what I’m trying to ask is,” she continued, her voice much quieter, “what is it about her that you love? Could you have ever...loved...m…” She shook her head, not letting herself finish.  
I stared at her for a few moments. Then I looked at my hands, which I’d folded into my lap. I picked at my nails as I said, “You know, Molly...I’ve been asking myself the same question. It makes so much more sense that I would love you—I’ve known you longer, been friendly with you for longer…” I shook my head. “But Avalon...I don’t know why I love her. I just know that I do. And I do think, Molly, that there may have been a time, if I’d never met Avalon, that I might have learned to love you. I might have learned what love _is._ But Avalon’s taught me how to love and I’ve loved her. I love her. I don’t mean to hurt you Molly, I promise. I’ve never meant to hurt you.”  
She nodded. “I know,” she whispered. She looked from her hands to me. “Tell me it isn’t just sexual with her. Tell me it’s not like it was with Janine.”  
“What? No, no, it’s so much more than that, I promise. Beautiful as she may be, she’s got a soul that’s worth so much more than sex.”  
“It’s just...after what I just saw…”  
I grimaced as desire flooded me again, tingling in my groin. “It was mostly her touching me, but I see what you mean. Neither of us intended for you to see that, Molly. We just got so wrapped up in ourselves… Avalon might be the death of me and my work drive, to be honest.”  
Molly tried to laugh but it died quickly. We tried to smile at each other but our eyes drifted quickly to different places in the room.  
“I think I’m going to hurt for a while, Sherlock.” Molly was quiet when she finally spoke again. “I don’t know how to tell Avalon. How to tell her that I hurt and that I still love you and that I might for a while. How am I supposed to do that?”  
I spread my hands. “That I don’t have an answer to. If anyone knows this, it’s you, but I’m not the expert on romance. Maybe ask John that sort of thing.” That brought forth a little laugh from her. I smiled. “It’s okay, Molly. That you’re hurting. That you’re jealous. I’m sure Avalon, however you tell her, will understand.”  
Silence. Then— “Can I have a hug, Sherlock?”  
I stood up and walked to her, enfolding her into a hug. “Of course, Molly Hooper.” I waited for a few minutes, letting her sniffle, before I said, “You are my friend, Molly. You will always be my friend.”


	33. Avalon Foster

I stared at the three guards—Gwydion, Vixen, and Prospero—from behind a mirrored glass, highly unamused. Prospero wore his usual smug grin; Gwydion seemed clueless as to what he was doing down here; Vixen just looked like she hadn’t gotten any sleep in a month.   
Gwydion, Greg and Donovan had decided, seemed to be the least likely one to have given Moran the wine. But both Vixen and Prospero seemed likely to have done it. Vixen’s family owned a vineyard and Prospero was a frequent visitor there. Half the Ministry was convinced they were bedding each other, just for the wine. Without looking at either of my fellow Aurors, I murmured, “Would you put it past them to invite Moran into their bed with the promise of wine and a good night?”  
“No,” they both said.  
My mouth formed a grim line. “I figured that.”  
“Do you think it’s worth chasing? Demand answers from them using that as our story?” Donovan asked.  
“That’s a good question,” I muttered. “The truth is, I don’t know.”  
We watched in silence. I glared through the mirrored window, my mouth twisted into disgust. I flexed my fingers, debating silently with myself. If I were to go in there, armed only with a wild guess, Vixen and Prospero could very easily laugh in my face. Holding their sexual relationship against them, threatening to make it public, wasn’t an option—the Ministry was well-aware of what went on behind closed doors between the two of them. It had already been used to forward Mycroft’s ascent to Minister, too, so there was no way the rest of the wizarding community didn’t know about their tangling.  
“Are we convinced Gwydion isn’t involved? We know from experience he’s a very good actor.”  
“I don’t see any reason as to why Gwydion would interact with Moran at all, not to mention get drunk and have a good time with him,” Donovan said.  
“He also has a health condition that prevents him from drinking too much,” Greg remembered. “Avalon, remember that time we took all our Aurors out for drinks before I went to Hogwarts? He told us he couldn’t drink.”  
“Right,” I agreed, “so what fun would he have getting Moran drunk? None at all.”  
“There could be other motives,” Donovan suggested. “While you were gone, there were riots just outside the Ministry—people who were related to his victims trying to get in and beat him up. Is Gwydion related to any one of his victims?”  
“I’ll check the records,” Greg said, snapping back into his former role as Head Auror. “For now...Avalon, if you could separate Gwydion from Vixen and Prospero—” He flushed, realizing Donovan was giving him raised eyebrows. “Erm. If, uh, that’s what you think we should do.”  
I smiled. “It’s fine, Greg. I’ll do just that. You go check the records. Donovan, make sure nothing happens with these two while I move Gwydion across the hall.” I left the room and entered the one we’d been watching. All three looked up at me when I walked in, standing in front of their steel table.  
“Head Auror Foster, I don’t understand why all this is necessary,” Vixen spat. “Chained to the table, locked in an interrogation room after a half hour in the holding cell. What’s the _point_ of all this?”  
“One or more of you either gave Sebastian Moran zinfandel wine or worked with someone else to get that wine in his system—effectively rigging the entire trial set to happen. I intend to find out which of you did it and proper punishment will come to you.”  
“Proper punishment?” Gwydion stared at me with wide eyes, terrified. The relatively new Auror had the look of terrified prey about him. I always hated scaring the fresh-faced recruits who were so eager to join our task force—but I was willing to instill fear if it would keep an incident like this from occurring again on a much larger scale.  
I shrugged. “What that might be, I don’t know. It’s not my decision to mete it out, it’ll be up to Minister Holmes this time.”  
Vixen’s eyebrows rose. “Minister Holmes?”  
“It was his brother that Moran targeted. This trial will bring closure to Mr. Holmes the Younger and clear up my name as well. Minister Holmes has every right to allot harsh punishment.”  
They all went still. Prospero asked, “It involves you?”  
“I’m sure you all read the _Daily Prophet,_ saw how they attacked me. If this case doesn’t get cleared up, I lose my job. Professor Holmes will suffer if this case doesn’t go well. Hogwarts lost two students; one of them was very close to him, a Ravenclaw he considered his daughter.” Yes, I was trying to guilt-trip them into confessing. “Now—Gwydion, if you’ll come with me. We’re moving you to a different location. Nothing to worry,” I added as he tensed up, “just standard procedure.”  
It took me ten minutes to move Gwydion from one interrogation room to the next across the hall. I sat down across from him. “Gwydion, I don’t think you did it. But if you did, I need you to come clean to me immediately. Tell me what you know, without much persuasion, and I will make sure the punishment the Minister gives is light.”  
Two minutes later, I had the full story. He’d been on duty when Vixen came in with a bottle of wine for them all. Moran was awake; Molly had only just given him the tonic and it would take a few minutes for it to settle into his bloodstream. Vixen and Prospero had gotten started on the wine and Gwydion, uncomfortable, had left early.   
I was stepping out of the interrogation room when Donovan hurried over from the other room, grinning. I raised an eyebrow. “I got some outta Gwydion. You got any info?”  
Her grin was wild. “Oh, lots. They’ve started to talk—and they’re saying everything.”


	34. Sherlock Holmes

An hour and seven minutes after Avalon left, she, Lestrade, and Donovan returned, smirking. I raised an eyebrow, leaning away from the microscope. “I take it you found something good?”  
Avalon slid into a seat beside me, grinning. “They all came clean.”  
“And?”  
“They were all on guard duty. About an hour into today’s afternoon shift, Vixen brought out some wine. Gwydion left because of that—he’ll be fined for leaving his post but other than that there shouldn’t be heavy punishment on his shoulders. Vixen and Prospero, however…” Avalon grinned. “Donovan, care to tell the story?”  
“With pleasure,” Donovan said with relish. “Prospero’s family has ties to one of Moran’s victims. While the two were together with Prospero’s family, a heated discussion arose when Vixen accidentally let slip they were guarding Moran. That was five days ago. According to Vixen, she received a letter three days before last. It contained some sort of powder—she claims not to know what it was—and a note. It said something to the gist of ‘put this in the wine of Sebastian Moran in the place of Veritaserum’. Vixen told Prospero about it; they agreed it was worth a shot. They took zinfandel wine, knowing it was potent enough to disguise the taste of the powder, and mixed it beforehand. They took in two bottles—one for Moran and one for themselves. Vixen brought out the bottle of regular wine. She and Prospero started in on that; Gwydion left; twenty minutes later, they gave Moran the wine. Whatever powder was in it and Molly’s tonic reacted to make his reaction to the drugged wine much stronger than it should have been.”  
As Donovan finished, things in my mind started to click together. _“Oh,”_ I realized. “Powder.”  
“You know what it is,” Avalon hazarded.  
“I have a guess,” I murmured, shifting through papers that held the results from the tests I’d run in the hour they’d been getting a confession. “But because it’s me, it’s probably right.” I found the paper I wanted. I scrutinized it, studying studying studying— _There!_  
I pointed to the spot on the paper. “Here. Trace amounts of an unknown substance were found in his bloodstream. It’s likely the doxepin and ramelteon have changed the substance’s chemical makeup, which is why I didn’t recognize it, but if I can run another test…” I quickly stood, nearing sending the chair crashing back. Avalon caught and steadied it.  
“Sherlock? What is it?”  
“Come on, I have to test this!” Without waiting to see if she followed, I left the room.

In a lab two doors down, Avalon sat across the table, watching me. She looked glum, a note delivered by Anthea telling us Chief Warlock Ogden had postponed the trial indefinitely—Mycroft had added an aside that promised Ogden was going to wait until we had results to give us a date to prepare for. Avalon was now methodically crumpling and uncrumpling the paper.  
I looked up from the microscope. She hardly noticed as I leaned closer and gently took the paper. Her fingers just kept flexing as they had been when she’d held it.  
Adjusting the lens, I looked at the petri dish again. The sample of Moran’s blood that I was looking at was discolored, presumably from the reaction between ramelteon, doxepin, and the powdery substance. I had a good idea of what it was but I doubted the Wizengamot would continue the trial if our results were based on a hunch.  
Avalon folded her hands together and leaned across the counter, watching me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her observing me, her eyes tightening in a bit of a smile. Her pupils were blown. She was looking at me the way she had right before she’d kissed me earlier. She wanted me again. I couldn’t say I didn’t agree. But she _was_ terribly distracting.  
“Avalon,” I began, “if you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to have to stop working to kiss you. Hard. Long. Passionate.”  
Avalon raised both eyebrows as I finally met her eyes. “Don’t make it sound so tempting if you want me to stop.”  
A slow smile formed on my face before I could stop it. “When I’m done working, we’ll continue what we started in the other lab.”  
She raised both eyebrows. “Continue,” she noted. “How far are you willing to go, then?”  
I lowered my eyes back to the microscope. “As far as you want to.”  
“So not too far.”  
“You seemed quite...eager earlier.”  
“As did you.”  
Briefly I glanced up, then saw how she bowed her head, eyes to the floor, trying to hide the pink of her cheeks. It appeared as though I had miscalculated. “Soooo… Y-you mean you weren’t eager to get my clothes on the floor and us against a wall?”  
Avalon slowly raised her head. “What is it with us and intimate acts against walls?”  
“A wall seemed more convenient than a countertop or a floor.”  
“Oh.” She met my eyes. Her eyes scanned my body. My skin tingled. “Though if I’m being honest, I wouldn’t mind getting that shirt off you.”  
My cheeks burned. “O-oh.”  
Avalon gave a little giggle. “You look cute when you’re blushing.”  
I was sure the color of my cheeks deepened. Biting my lip, I went back to my study of Moran’s blood, looking for the powder.

“THAT’S IT!” I clapped my hands together. “Oh, _wonderful! That’s it!”_  
Jerking back up, Avalon gave me a wide-eyed stare. “What’s it?” she asked blearly. It appeared as though she’d been on the verge of sleeping. I came around and pulled her up into my arms. Shocked and stiff, Avalon tried to look up at me but I squeezed her close and kissed the top of her head. “Eureka!” I cried.  
“‘Eureka’ what?” Avalon demanded.  
I beamed at her. “I did it! I figured it out! It’s ricin powder!”  
She blinked at me. “Ricin powder? Like the stuff that comes from castor beans?”  
“Exactly that!” I exclaimed, returning to my work station. She followed me. “It’s not enough to kill him, just enough to set him off balance and poison his system. No doubt it’s flushed itself out of him by now.”  
“Then how did he get the reaction he did? How did it drug him?”  
“It looks as though the zinfandel wine, doxepin, ricin, and ramelteon all reacted together to create some sort of substance that would act as a poison. It was clearly intended to kill Moran, but the dosage was wrong… The person who sent Vixen the ricin powder either was not entirely sure what they were doing or was simply a bumbling fool who made a miscalculation. I suspect—”  
“Sherlock, you’re a genius,” Avalon breathed, then took me by either side of my head and kissed me fierce and hard. When I moaned into her mouth this time, she didn’t startle. This time she licked my lower lip and dragged her hand slowly through my hair.   
It was a miracle either of us remembered we needed to report my findings. Only when her hands passed over my scalp for the seventh time and then dropped to the buttons of my shirt did I remember, gasping into her mouth, “Ricin. Gotta...gotta tell the others.”  
“Oh. Right,” Avalon breathed. _“Merlin,_ Sherlock, we gotta stop doing that.”  
I grinned at her. “What, getting distracted, making out, nearly ripping each other’s clothes off and having each other against a wall?”  
“Last I checked we weren’t going that far— Sherlock, what is it with you and wanting me against a wall?!”  
“No idea,” I breathed, kissing her one last time. She whined when I pulled my lips from hers. “Come on, let’s go tell the others. We can snog later.”  
“That’s a deal I can agree to,” she decided.   
We practically ran back to the others to share our findings. I explained the ricin and how it had reacted to the wine and two drugs. Molly ran a few tests to confirm my theory; once she had, Avalon and Lestrade dragged me down to the interrogation rooms where Vixen and Prospero were still being held.   
Lestrade opened the door for us. I followed Avalon in, and then he followed us, shutting the door behind us with a clang. The two guards looked up. The female, Vixen, eyed me. As a sensual smile pulled on her lips, Avalon gave her a glare that seemed to terrify her.  
“Who’s this?” demanded the male, Prospero, who didn’t look too pleased that Vixen was still ogling me below the waist. I felt the urge to sit down so she’d stop staring there, but I didn’t want to do anything Avalon wouldn’t do and she remained standing.  
One look between Prospero and Vixen told me they’d been shagging—likely over a period of about two or three years. He didn’t seem too pleased Vixen was looking at me the way she was.   
I decided as she mentally undressed me she was aptly named.  
“Mr. Holmes the Younger,” Avalon said coolly. “Professor Holmes, this is Vixen Nickel and Prospero Badeust. You two, behave. Vixen, eyes up. The professor has run some tests. The powder was ricin powder, intended to kill.” Now she sat, so I followed her example. Gaze sharper than steel, she leaned forward toward Vixen and Prospero. They unconsciously leaned backward. “Now. If either you have any idea who sent the ricin powder to Vixen so you would slip it to Moran, I need to know.”  
“If you need any extra incentive,” Lestrade added from where he leaned against the two-way mirror, “the two of you are looking at murder charges and a few years in Azkaban if we can get it for attempting to poison Moran. Come clean about who supplied you with ricin powder—or at least any ideas of who did it—and we’ll charge you as accomplices and take away those years in Azkaban.”  
The two were silent for a long time.  
Then Prospero looked up. “I think it’s from someone in my family.”  
Avalon raised both eyebrows. “Why?”  
“We only got the letter _after_ we told my family that we were guarding Moran. It makes sense that one of them might get angry about Uncle Illi and choose to get revenge. Atticus was also killed, but he’s not technically part of our family anymore.”  
“Is there anyone particularly violent? A sibling of Illi’s? Who comes to mind when you ask yourself who might have done this?”  
Prospero bit his lip. “His siblings and wife are dead. So are his parents. There’s his children, but there’re twelve of them so it would be difficult to get conclusive results.”  
“Not as hard as you’d think,” I realized. “Avalon, Lestrade—a word.” They followed me out of the room and closed the door. Then we watched them through the two-way mirror.   
“What is it, Sherlock? I can see the gears turning, explain what’s going on in your head,” Lestrade said. “You have an idea.”  
I nodded. “First things first—we’re overlooking Anderson’s work. Sure, we caught Moran, but we never double-checked his prints against the ones Anderson pulled from Wilkes or Leesion.” I studied Prospero through the glass. “I think there’s someone else.”  
Lestrade frowned. “You mean you think we’ve got the wrong guy?”  
“No, Moran made a confession,” Avalon reminded him. She eyed me as if wondering what I was thinking. “Sher...are you saying there’s a...a...an accomplice of some sort?” Her eyes narrowed. “But that doesn’t make sense. If you’re implying the accomplice is the one that sent the ricin powder, why does this accomplice aim to kill their partner?”  
_“Sher?”_ I echoed.  
She shrugged. “Trying out a nickname.”  
Lestrade’s eyes widened in dawning realization. “If Moran is dead, the case is closed. We don’t go snooping anymore if the murderer is dead, so the accomplice doesn’t get noticed. Even better, Moran dead means the name of this accomplice can’t be used to gain Moran freedom or a chance at seeing Moriarty, which is what everybody who’s involved with this case knows he wants most.”  
“And,” I continued, “if Prospero’s guess that a family member wants revenge is correct, there’s more motive right there.”  
Avalon put her head in her hands. “This case just keeps getting more and more complicated every single time I think I’m getting to the end of it.”  
“Welcome to my world,” Lestrade grumbled. “It’s the Pirma case all over again.”  
Avalon gave Lestrade the weirdest look I’d seen from her. “This is so much worse than the Pirma case.”  
“Is it though?”  
“Yes.”  
“What’s the Pirma case?” I asked.  
“Nothing,” Lestrade said quickly. I raised my eyebrows. He waved me off. “Anyway, the rest of your idea? It sounded like you had more.”  
“We get a list from Prospero. We see if we can match the accomplice to anyone in Prospero’s list. If we can, the guy who sent the letter is our new suspect. If we can get Anderson’s fingerprints to confirm this, we’re good.”  
“Why don’t we just ask Moran the name of his accomplice? Wouldn’t it be easier? Less red tape to go through?” Avalon asked.  
“No,” I said crisply. “Moran doesn’t yet know that we are aware of his accomplice. Explaining that and convincing him to divulge the information would take longer than anything else. We already know Moran’s loyalty runs deep. He’s not going to be helpful.”  
Avalon sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”  
Something told me she was in need of—or at least wanted—comfort. I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. When she leaned into me, I kissed the top of her head. Lestrade rolled his eyes. I stuck my tongue out at him while Avalon flipped him an offensive symbol. Lestrade snorted.  
“Alright. Let’s get that list,” Avalon sighed and went back inside.

Equipped with a list of sixteen names—the twelve children and four others Prospero believed might be angry enough to commit murder over—the three of us went in search of Anderson. When we found him, Avalon demanded to have the results of the fingerprints test.  
Two hours later, we had a name: Eris Loichen.


	35. Sherlock Holmes

Her chest rose and fell normally. She looked pensive from where she lay beside me, surrounded by piles of blankets and pillows on her bed. Our legs lay entwined, our fingers the same between us. There was a movie on the telly, but I wasn’t really paying attention to that.  
A file lay between us as well, detailing the Moran case. Avalon and I had penciled in details as we discussed the case. We would find Eris Loichen in the morning, but for now we needed rest. Mycroft had ordered Avalon back to her flat to rest; I went with her when she invited me.  
Surrounded by fluffy pillows and thick, soft blankets, my body was warm and heavy with sleep, but I couldn’t seem to sleep. Maybe it was because Avalon had pushed me against a wall in an alleyway (again with the walls) and made out with me until we couldn’t breathe. Maybe it was because ten minutes later, when we reached her flat, we had our hands in each other’s hair and snogged in her kitchen. Maybe it was because over the course of the hour or so we’d been laying on her bed we’d kissed and kissed and kissed at various intervals.  
I didn’t want to sleep, regardless of how exhausted I was. I still wanted to pull her close and kiss her until we couldn’t breathe again and breathe in her comforting smell.  
Avalon seemed to sense where my thoughts were straying. She pulled herself close to me. “You want me to kiss you again, my darling Sherlock?”  
“Please,” I breathed, already lowering my mouth to hers.   
“Ah ah ah,” she said, stopping me. “Let _me_ kiss _you.”_  
“Okay,” I whispered after a moment, moving back. “Okay.” I stare into her eyes a moment longer, observing the lovely light grey.  
My eyes flutter closed as her hand slides up my jaw, her fingers coming to a rest beneath my ear. I covered her hand with my own, my thumb finding her wrist and feeling her pulse. Delighting in the way her pulse quickened, I pulled her body close, my hand on her waist. Her other hand drifted across my face, caressing my cheekbones, my nose, my jaw. Her lips drifted over my forehead and cheeks. Her mouth came to a brief rest under my ear, then on my temple. She drifted lower, brushing a kiss to my neck and then collarbone. I whimpered each time.   
“If you leave a mark,” I mumbled as she kissed my lower neck gently again, “Mycroft will have our heads.”  
“Oh, don’t you worry,” she promised me, her fingers splaying over my heart. “I’ll leave your pale skin unadorned.”  
I gave a light hum in response. Then she lifted her head up and found my mouth.  
Despite the sensual touching we’d just done, the kiss wasn’t needy. It was soft and slow, perfect. It was different from all the other kissing we’d done that day, but I was glad she chose to kiss me slowly. My heart slowed to a steady thrum beneath her palm.  
We were warm, cozy, cuddling, and exchanging lazy, chaste kisses. This quiet peace was a drug I was more than willing to get addicted to.   
Avalon curled into my side, kissing the hollow at the base of my neck. I lifted her head, kissing her again. It was her turn to moan into my mouth when I swept my tongue through her lips. The sound she made sent a thrill up my spine. I brushed my hand through her hair.  
“Sherlock…” My name was nothing more than an exhale on her lips.   
“Mmm…”   
Avalon carded her fingers once through my curls before her eyes finally fluttered closed. Her body went loose and limp against the pillows and blankets. I kissed her cheek softly before curling myself into her side and slipping into sleep.

I woke before Avalon. No surprise there, considering that she’d been running herself ragged for so long and had hardly slept since we’d gone to Hogwarts while comforting students. I pushed a kiss to her forehead. She didn’t stir.  
Carefully, as not to wake her, I slipped off the bed and tiptoed into the kitchen. I rooted through cabinets as quietly as I could until I found what I was looking for. Quietly, I set to work.

Yawning, Avalon stumbled out of her bedroom and into the living room. Her red hair was a fiery mess but she looked so much better with just the little bit of sleep she’d gotten. She rubbed at her eyes and then smiled sleepily at me.  
“What’s all this?”  
“Breakfast,” I said, gesturing to the spread of food across her countertop. “Tea?”  
“Sure,” she said, sliding onto a stool. I stopped to kiss the top of her head, stooping to do so. She watched me as I made her a cup of tea, then as I filled a plate for her. She dug in with relish as I served myself. “I didn’t know you could cook,” she remarked idly when I sat down beside her.  
Coughing awkwardly, I said, “Well, I can’t. I did this with magic.”  
Avalon laughed. But she kept eating. “It’s good,” she assured me.  
“Wonderful,” I sighed. “I was terrified it would be terrible.”  
She gave another little giggle. “No need to worry.”  
A few short moments later, an owl flew in through an open window. It dropped off a copy of the _Daily Prophet,_ hooting loudly, demanding to be paid. Avalon fished out the money to pay the owl, then flipped open the paper. I could easily see the unease written across her face as she scanned it. At last she put it down and went back to sipping her tea. “Only a brief mention that the trial was postponed as new evidence comes to light.”  
“Nothing attacking you?” I asked, brushing a hand over her head.   
“Not yet,” she replied and then took my hand to kiss the inside of my wrist. I blushed, then went back to eating.

Wrapped up in my scarf and coat, my hand sheathed in leather gloves and hidden inside my pockets, I stood turned against the wind. Avalon’s arm was tucked through mine, her own hands red and trembling slightly. Her cheeks were just as pink, hair a windswept mess. On her other side was Lestrade. Beside me was John. Both shivered, John hiding from the blast of freezing wind in his cloak. Lestrade was the only one seemingly unaffected by the cold.  
“Where was it you said Eris Loichen lived again?” Avalon demanded, a shiver slinking through her body.  
“A few miles up that road,” Lestrade directed. “We can get there in a few minutes.”  
“If it doesn’t start snowing before then,” John grumbled unhappily.  
“The students would love it if it snowed,” I said idly.  
“Except for the Quidditch teams. Oliver Wood was the only captain Gryffindor ever had that would make his team practice in the snow.”  
“That’s why he was a Gryffindor—lacking in common sense, in every sense the words mean.”  
 _“Hey!”_  
“Boys,” Avalon laughed. “House rivalries can wait, can’t they?”  
I sighed. “I suppose.”  
“Oh, but do they have to?” John complained. “They’re distracting me from this blasted cold.”  
Avalon rolled her shoulders and tucked her face into the heavy sweater I’d insisted she put on that morning before we left to meet John and Lestrade. Her hands slipped into her pockets. “Alright then, bicker all you wish.”  
“Last I checked, a fire did better than bickering to warm people up,” Lestrade said as we started walking again when the bitter wind died down just enough.  
Avalon scowled. “Yes, and the last time I tried to do that, I burned up my phoenix form’s natural magic reserves. I’m never doing that again.”  
“Hang on, _what?”_ John raised both eyebrows. “I wanna know the context of that.”  
“Be careful of what you tell him,” I warned Avalon. “He’s a writer, he’ll find a way to fit it into some narrative of his.”  
Avalon gave a small smile. “We had one case where we got stuck in the cold with no place to go; now as a phoenix Animagus, I have the ability to reach into the phoenix’s natural power reserves to use fire. That’s how I do the dramatic fire trick when I transform. But we were cold, so I decided to try and see if I could heat the group of us. It backfired. I burned up those reserves, then ended up getting third degree burns on my wrists. I still have the marks.” She held up her hands, her sleeves falling down enough to reveal the fire scars.  
“Okay, that’s not what I was expecting,” John admitted.  
“If it hadn’t been so serious at the time, it would’ve been funny,” Lestrade added. “Thing is, we thought she was going to die. We only started laughing about it when we learned she’d be fine. She hated us for months after that—the entire Auror Department was sniggering about it whenever she transformed.”  
“I still hate you,” Avalon muttered, expression souring. Lestrade smirked.   
“But it _is_ funny,” he insisted.  
Avalon bristled. “Oh, yeah? _You_ try having your body feel like it’s burning from the inside out if you think it’s so funny, then.” Lestrade snorted and she stuck her tongue out at him, decided it was too cold for that, and then buried her face in her scarf.  
Sharp and cold wind blowing, I flipped my collar up against it. We started down the road, heads bowed. I tucked Avalon into my side as she shuddered again. John rolled his eyes at us.  
“What?” I demanded.  
He waved a hand in our general direction. “You...being cuddly. It’s odd.”  
I blinked at him. “I could hold you, too.”  
“Sherlock, no,” John chided. “That’s not how that works.”  
“How is it not how it works?!”  
“Because it just doesn’t.”  
“Yes it does!”  
“No—”  
“Avalon, help me convince him—”  
“Don’t involve me!” she yelped.  
Lestrade coughed very loudly. “Cut it out, you three, we’re here.”  
Avalon shot him a look. “But I—”  
Lestrade knocked on the door. “Eris Loichen? We need to speak to you, we’re the of the Auror Department.”  
“I should have done that, I’m the Head Auror,” Avalon grumbled.  
“You’re too busy cuddling with your boyfriend,” Lestrade snorted.  
Avalon stuck out her tongue again, then sighed, “I shouldn’t have done that.”  
I tilted her head up. “Cold tongue?”  
“Yes,” she muttered, cheeks getting pinker.  
“I can fix that,” I murmured, then did just that.   
_“Guys!”_ Lestrade groaned.  
_“We’re on the job!”_ John reminded us.  
I shrugged but we ceased our passionate kiss. We stared at the door and then Avalon unwound her arm from mine to knock a second time. “Eris Loichen, open this door by order of the Ministry of Magic. I am Head Auror Avalon Foster, we need you to answer a few questions for us about your association with Sebastian Moran.”  
Soft footfalls echoed through the house. Lestrade’s hand drifted to the pocket his wand was concealed in. John’s hand curled into a fist. Avalon nodded to us. “Stay sharp,” she muttered. “Eris is an oddball. We don’t know what to expect.”  
My own fingers curled around my wand without my meaning for them to. Avalon’s body tensed up as the footsteps grew closer, cautious but overly pronounced. The owner did not wish to take us by surprise.   
The woman who opened the door was not, in fact, a woman. She was a girl, not more than five years old. The girl’s black hair was curly, her skin a lovely chocolate shade. Had she note been only five, I would have guessed she was Eris Loichen herself—she fit the description perfectly, save for age (and thus height).  
Clearly, this was her daughter, Ismenea.  
Avalon had clearly also made the connection. “Ismenea Loichen?”  
The girl nodded.  
“Can you bring us to your mother, or your mother here to us?”  
Ismenea nodded. “Wait here.” Turning back on soft feet, she left the door open to us and the cold. She had the same lilting voice Prospero had described Eris to have.  
The appearance of the child was clearly purposeful—Eris hoped that they would not imprison her if she had a child to care for.  
“Does the girl have a father?” Lestrade asked.  
“Estranged. Her parents have been divorced in all of Imenea’s life. Her father—Atticus Queyo—left Eris shortly after she told him she was pregnant. Since then, Atticus has started a new family. Moran killed all but two of them: Atticus himself and his infant son Auberon.”  
I felt ill. “So it was revenge, then.”  
“Yes,” Avalon whispered as two figures appeared at the end of the hall.  
The two were identical—mother Eris and daughter Imenea. Feathery black hair cascaded down the length of their backs and both had eyes that reminded me of the brightest night we could see from the Astronomy Tower at Hogwarts, black as pitch but glowing with the light of the stars, making them look grey.  
“Eris Loichen, I’m Head Auror Avalon Foster—”  
“I know who you are,” she said sharply.  
“Then you understand what I’m here for?”  
“I’m afraid not,” Eris replied coldly. “I only know the _Prophet_ thinks you a disgrace and I’m inclined to believe it.”  
I noticed the twitch of Avalon’s fingers within her pockets. The jibe hit her right where Loichen had intended it to. My fingers curled into a fist around my wand.  
“Regardless of what you believe,” Avalon continued, her voice icy, “you might play a vital part in our case. We need to speak to you. It involves your father Illi and your ex-husband Atticus. And Sebastian Moran.”  
Eris’s fingers tightened on the doorframe. “Then you’ll need to come inside.” She opened the door wider and the four of us followed her inside.


	36. Avalon Foster

“Tea?” Eris asked when she returned several minutes after we’d gotten settled in her living room. She did, indeed, hold a tray with a pot of tea and enough cups for all of us on it. But considering that we suspected her of trying to poison Moran with ricin powder, drinking anything she gave us was not an option.  
“No, thank you,” I said politely. “We had plenty to drink on our journey.”  
Eris shrugged. “If you are quite sure,” she said idly. “I merely offered because it is cold. I suffer great chills in this weather.”  
Sherlock met my gaze. It was unlikely that was her true intention. Already I could smell the very strong scent of the tea; the taste of such a tea would disguise the presence of ricin powder. It was also suggestive that Eris, despite claiming to be cold, did not drink the tea.  
“Now. We need to discuss a few things with you,” I said. “Your involvement is suspected with the poisoning of Sebastian Moran and the deaths of Illi and Atticus, along with Atticus’s family. All of these, if you are proven to be involved, will earn you a life sentence in Azkaban.”  
Eris’s face did not change. “What reason would I have to kill my father, to kill Moran? I could see why you would believe I had a motive to kill Atticus, but I don’t understand why you think I would kill my father.”  
“Oh, I have that solved just perfectly,” Sherlock said suavely from where he sat beside me. A smug grin had brought his mouth upward.   
“Have you, now?” Eris said scathingly. She glanced at me. “Who the hell even is this guy?”  
“Professor Sherlock Holmes,” he said.   
“Holmes?”  
“Younger brother of the Minister of Magic,” Sherlock supplied. “Now. Let me tell you how it happened. I’ve been formulating a theory as we traveled here and I’ve come to believe it true after seeing you.  
“Atticus left you when you were newly pregnant. You were a single mother struggling to make ends meet for yourself and your child. As years passed and you were forced to raise Ismenea on your own, you grew bitter. You hated your ex-husband for everything he’d done to wrong you.  
“You contacted Moran. You’d been close with him in school—dated him, I believe? Yes. Clearly you were still close, even after all these years. He may have taken to assassination, but here you had a problem his skill set could solve. So you contacted him and asked him to help you get revenge on Atticus, which he did by killing all of his family but not him, or the infant. It seems as though Moran has a moral compass after all.  
“So. Atticus was dead. Yet for some reason Moran decided to kill Illi. Perhaps your father knew Moran had killed Atticus and his family, or perhaps Moran simply flew into a rage. Either way, he killed your father. You had no doubts it was him—so you started to plan. You came up with the idea to kill Moran as revenge for killing your father. So much _revenge_ in you.  
“You sent the ricin powder. It was your revenge for Illi’s death. And, in an extra little twist of mercy for you, it prevented Moran from using you, and your involvement in the murders of the Queyo family, as a bargaining chip to keep out of Azkaban. Did I miss anything?”  
Eris had progressively gotten worse as Sherlock spoke: her face had become slack, her breathing rushed and shallow. Her eyes and nostrils flared. She was in a state of panic. Just a few more persuasive words and we might have her with her hands tied.  
“Just a few things,” Eris said, voice wobbly. “Moran didn’t kill Auberon because I told him not to. Killing a child...I couldn’t stand the idea of it. As much as Atticus had wronged me, I could not take revenge on the son that hardly had life in him to be considered guilty. The woman who had taken him from me and the children he doted on instead of my Ismenea—yes, them I could get revenge on without shame. But I would not let Moran kill the boy. So he killed my father instead. I didn’t learn of the trade he’d made in lives until after I was told Illi had been found dead the way the others had been. I knew then Moran had done it. I couldn’t say anything, of course, without revealing my...involvement, as you put it, in the Queyo family murders. So I stayed quiet and planned to murder Moran the first chance I got. When I learned Prospero was guarding him, I saw my perfect opportunity. I took it.”  
Stunned, I glanced at Lestrade. Never before had someone come so completely clean so... _quickly._ They all usually stalled or tried to lie their way out of a sentence in Azkaban. Just then I realized what was going on. My ears began to ring.  
“Surely you’ve never had someone confess so quickly,” Eris murmured. “I can see it in your faces—you’re surprised.”  
“Have you not thought of your daughter?” John demanded. The horror on his face—he was thinking of his own daughter and the unborn child Mary carried. “How could you commit a crime that would land you in Azkaban?”  
“Oh, that’s it, isn’t it,” I said. “Haven’t you realized, John? She confessed quickly—too quickly. She’s betting we’re going to lighten her sentence because of her quick confession. She sent Ismenea to the door to retrieve us for a reason. It’s a ploy.”  
Eris’s face darkened with a blush of embarrassment. “I confess, also, that that is true.”  
“We can’t lighten your sentence,” Lestrade said flatly. “It’s out of our power. We’ll put your case forward to the Wizengamot alongside Moran’s. What your sentence is will depend on that.”  
“However,” Sherlock added in a slight but unbelievably sexy (especially for the occasion) drawl, “the fact you have a daughter will be taken into account. She will be well-cared for, regardless of how the trial goes.” There was a kindness softening his eyes.   
Greg cleared his throat. “Will you do the honors or shall I, Avalon?”  
“You’re the one with the handcuffs,” I said tiredly.  
“Eris Loichen,” he began, drawing himself up and gently pulling her to stand, “you are under arrest.”  
“Someone ought to find the child,” John murmured softly.   
I nodded. “I’ll look for her.”  
But it didn’t take long for me to find the girl. Ismenea was waiting in the kitchen, drawing at the table. She looked up the moment I entered. There was something accusatory in her young eyes. I felt the briefest twinge of guilt before I finally managed to push it away.  
“Ismenea? Do you know what happened?”  
“You’re taking my mommy away,” said the girl. “Because of that man. The scary one.”  
My heart broke for the poor girl. She looked so scared, so nervous something was going to happen to her as well. “Yes, I...I’m afraid we are.”  
“Is something bad going to happen to my mommy?”  
My chest constricted. “No, Ismenea,” I promised. “Your mother will be well-cared for.” I decided then I didn’t care how many pulled strings it took, I would be making sure Eris Loichen had the best of care and that this child would have a loving family.  
Behind us, Greg led Eris out the front door as several loud _pop_ s alerted me to the team of Aurors sent to take care of Ismenea. There was a time when I would have done so myself, but I knew I’d be needed back at the Ministry to inform Mycroft of our findings and to write and submit a report to Chief Warlock Ogden.   
As Ismenea started to question the new Aurors, I sidled back to John and Sherlock, both of whom looked somber.  
John shook his head in Eris’s direction. “I can’t believe a mother would do that to her child… She just ripped Ismenea’s world apart.”  
Chest heavy, I said, “You would be surprised by how few people care about their children.” I turned my gaze back to the girl. She looked so lost and alone. As Greg joined us, he murmured, “Poor girl. She has so much on her shoulders.”  
“She’ll be known as a murderer’s daughter. It might not be exact, but that’s how the world will look at her. They’ll whisper behind her backs.”  
“She’s going to need someone with the kindest of hearts to raise her,” John sighed.  
“We have to get back to the Ministry,” Sherlock reminded me softly when we kept watching the girl. His hand brushed over my hair, trying to comfort me. I hardly felt it.  
“Okay,” I said, equally softly, and let Sherlock lead me to the front door. We stepped out into the bitter cold and he wrapped one of my hands in his gloved one, pressing closer to me. He squeezed my hand. I didn’t squeeze back. He persisted, and I at last squeezed back.  
“I think we’ve had enough of the cold,” Greg said. “We can Apparate back.”  
“Tell my brother Avalon and I will be returning to her flat,” Sherlock told him.  
“No, Sherlock, I’ve got work to do, the trial will be happening soon—”  
“It can wait another day,” he interrupted. “You have been working yourself too hard and now you need a break. After today’s ordeal, you are resting.”  
He Apparated us back to my flat.

Numbly, I took off my coat and hung it up. I drank the cup of tea Sherlock set in front of me. We snogged, but my lips moved mechanically without emotion. When Sherlock’s hand started to undo the ties at the back of my shirt to pull it off, I pushed him away.  
“I can’t,” I whispered.  
He smiled kindly, though the slightest bit of disappointment edged that smile. “Too far?”  
“That’s not what I meant,” I sighed forlornly.  
Sherlock took my hand and kissed my fingers. “Then what did you mean?” he asked. He brushed a lock of hair from my face. “Tell me what you mean, Avalon.”  
“I don’t mean to be so fragile,” I said, rubbing my thumb across the back of his hand. “Not with Ismenea earlier, or with you now. But seeing that little girl, all alone...she reminded me of myself. How I feel on the inside. Avery was always there for me, and now he’s not and I don’t know if he’s ever coming back. Ismenea doesn’t know if her mom’s coming back, I don’t know if my brother is. I already lost my parents, Sherlock. I don’t want to lose Avery.”  
Sherlock took my hand, caressing it. “I don’t know what to say,” he whispered.  
“You don’t have to know,” I whispered back. “I just need you to listen. To be here. To steady me.”  
“What constitutes as steadying you?” he murmured, leaning closer. A glimmer of want filtered into his eyes, slowly getting stronger.  
“What are you thinking?” I asked, eyeing his posture and the longing etched throughout it.  
“I don’t mean to objectify you in any way—”  
“I can’t see how that answers what I’m talking about. However, I am about to do something very impulsive and I hope you don’t mind.” I shoved him backward, flopping down on top of him. Our hands went through each other’s hair as we snogged. He pulled his hands away from my head to my shirt, fumbling with buttons. His eyes met mine.  
“Just shirts off,” he promised.  
“Just shirts off,” I agreed and got to work on his. When I was done, he pulled me against his bare chest and tossed our shirts to the floor. I noted, “You’re warm.”  
“Excellent observation,” he muttered, nipping at my lips. His hands explored my bare back, tracing every line and mark on me. He examined me, and I him, our feverish desire to get at bare skin subsiding. Lust turned to wonder and observation. We pulled back from each other to observe each other, noticing and tracing every imperfection.  
“You are perfect,” I whispered to him, settling my head to his chest. “But how is this supposed to comfort me about my inner Ismenea?”  
Sherlock kissed my lips already swollen from his attention to them. “Avalon, I love you and your inner Ismenea. I will stay with you and help you, the way John helped me but with much less yelling and banging of pots and pans and more romance.”  
“If you bang my pots and pans together, I will hex you.”  
“I thought so.”  
I smiled.  
“There’s that smile,” he cooed, kissing it. “Now if you don’t mind, let’s get some sleep.”  
“Okay,” I whispered, and we put our shirts back on.

Sherlock had long since gone to bed, but I remained awake, struggling to find sleep. I’d received word shortly after Sherlock had collapsed on my brother’s bed that the trial would take place in two days. Tomorrow, we’d be collecting the new evidence and shoving it into a file to present to the Wizengamot.   
I rubbed my eyes. Restless, I paced in my living room. I didn’t want to disturb Sherlock, so I kept as quiet as I could. Yet soon I was putting on my coat and hurrying out the door, locking the door behind me. I’d left a quick note by Sherlock’s bedside, should he wake up: _I have gone to see Avery. Don’t worry._  
I was out the door in a second, taking a cab to St. Mungo’s.  
When I arrived, my brother remained sleeping. I hadn’t expected a change, but my heart still twanged when the nurse told me nothing had changed—nothing better, nothing worse. Just sleep.  
“Hey, Avery,” I sighed, plopping into the plastic chair beside him. “I’ve got a lot to tell you. So much has happened over these past days… I can’t possibly know where to start.” I curled my hand around his. “Well. Moran’s trial was delayed. The guards tried to poison him, but the ricin powder they used—sent by Eris Loichen, the family member of one of the guards, Prospero—reacted strangely with the wine they’d put it in and the mixture Molly came up with to keep Moran incapacitated.   
“So he showed up drunk to his trial. And there was nothing we could do about it except find out why—which we did—so the trial was postponed. It’ll be in two days. But I’m worried about it. Everything about this case is so...so bizarre. I can’t help but feel something is going to go so incredibly wrong. Is that wrong of me, Avery? Should I just be glad it’s over, am I being paranoid? Or is this...is this right? Should I be worr—”  
“Sorry to interrupt,” said a nurse. “But there’s a...um...rather important gentleman outside who wishes to see you.”  
It didn’t take brains to figure out who it was. “Send him in.”  
Mycroft stood in the door a few minutes later. I hardly looked up at him. “Hello, Minister.”  
“I thought,” he began, “when you left your flat alone you might want to be alone for a while. But that you might need company.”  
“You’re watching me?”  
“I’m watching Sherlock,” he interrupted. “But I thought it appropriate to follow you.”  
I blinked at him. “Be careful, you’re starting to become like your brother.”  
Mycroft flinched. “Emotional, you mean.”  
“You could put it that way,” I agreed, shrugging. I flicked my gaze over him, then bowed my head. “Look, Minister, I know you think checking in on me is what I need, but right now I just need some time alone with my brother. So if you wouldn’t mind—”  
“I don’t approve of your...relationship with my brother.”  
I blinked. _“That’s_ what you followed me to tell me? When you could have just _told me at work sometime?_ Instead you gotta be creepy and follow me?”  
“My brother is sensitive, more so than he’d like to admit,” Mycroft continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. I got the sense he was ignoring me. “For some reason, he’s fond of you, just as fond as he ever has been of John. He’s grown attached to you in a short matter of time. You are a vulnerability. I have always taught him not to care. Still, he cares for you.”  
I met his cold gaze with a fiery one of my own. “Are you suggesting, Mycroft, that I break up with him? That I should rid him of me and thus his vulnerability?”  
“On the contrary,” said Mycroft, surprising me. “I may not like it, but you have already become a part of his life. Should you hurt him, however, it will be something you severely regret.”  
My lips pulled into a bitter smile. “Are you threatening me?”  
“Yes.”  
Shaking my head, I sighed, “You worry too much, Mycroft. I’ve figured that all out for myself. I knew what I was getting into when I let him kiss me that first time. I know how I feel about your brother. I’m not going to break his heart.”  
“You say that now,” Mycroft said judgmentally, “but you won’t always think that.”  
“You sound so certain.”  
“Of course I’m certain.”  
“Why?”  
“Sherlock is not an easy person to love.”  
“Neither am I.”  
“Sherlock is worse.”  
Anger rose in my heart. “How can you be so _cruel_ to your _own brother?!_ Sherlock is better than you say and you _know it._ You know it. You put him down over and over again but he’s worth so much more than you make him think. You are lucky, Mycroft, for what you have,” I spat. “Your brother is awake and functioning and thinking and loving, yet here you are sneering down at him while I wait by my brother’s bedside, hoping to Merlin he’ll wake up.” When I jumped to my feet to get in his face, the plastic chair fell back with a bang. “You just remember, _Minister,_ how lucky you are to have a brother like yours—alive, well, and functioning just wonderfully.”  
Mycroft looked very taken aback by my outburst. I could hardly believe I’d managed to say it. I was trembling all over. I sank to the floor, picked up the chair, and shakily sat back down. I pointedly ignored Mycroft and took Avery’s hand again.  
Awkward silence reigned.   
Then, at last, Mycroft spoke: “You care deeply. Sherlock needs that.”  
“I’m glad you suddenly think so.”  
“I mean it, Avalon. Please—take care of my brother.” And then he left. I watched as his form stalked down the hallway, then looked back at Avery.  
“Well. You heard that. Work is going to be so awkward tomorrow.”  
I went back home.


End file.
